FLASHY TITLE!

Join me (a total mapping noob) on a wild ride through *kinda* learning how to make maps! Every playable map ive ever made so far has been added to this wad in date order.. so you'll get to see plenty of stuff thats not right, amateur mistakes, and all the other things that could possibly go wrong!

Inspired by some of the well known difficult wads of the last 10 years or so.. Mostly Sunder, Speed of Doom, Newgothic, Holy Hell, Sunlust, and anything from the Slaughterfest series... Basically trying to make nice looking rooms that i can ram full of revenants :D

Boom format, 15 ALL STRICTLY PISTOL START maps.

Gameplay is classed as difficult i guess... im not a doomgod and i managed to get through *most* of the maps without savescumming too much.

Screens:
http://i.imgur.com/CTPc20q.png?1

http://i.imgur.com/BPgsOZD.png?1

http://i.imgur.com/6GTf3lX.png?1

http://i.imgur.com/2wxD6Pu.png?1

http://i.imgur.com/B6pNh9k.png?1

http://i.imgur.com/jbr79ZD.png?1

Special thanks go to benjogami and Killer5 for playtesting :)


Get some tasty download here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5mskbe6epq38lqy/DankMidisAndLinedefs.wad?dl=0
Midis used are from various wads.. speed of doom, resurgence, a few blood midis, and some others that were in my midi folder that i have no idea where they came from :P

Is this WAD slaughterfest? Last year I threw learn Doom builder because it was hard understand. Since april I learned how to use doom builder and now I can build map. Respect that you can create map, not all can learn it :)

thanks! well the 2nd map has roughly 3100 monsters so i guess you could call it slaughter yeah.. probably not up to proper slaughterfest map standards tho :)

also.. ninja edit, main link map 1 updated with fix to broken door^^^

Here's a very long and sad complevel 9 FDA with lots of saves for "map2":

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kzjqybw7j1ik3yx/map2v0.1_benjogami_fda.lmp?dl=1

Notes:

- I didn't really like the crate maze (and not just because I had to do it twice! :P). I feel like the barons are supposed to delay the player while the archvile makes a mess? But even then there doesn't end up being much of a mess.
- The impassible lines on the side of the staircase in the lava room were confusing.
- Lava room fight was my 2nd fave even though I made it look harder than it is ;)
- I was glad that you warned about the backtracking, cause I probably would have gotten much more lost more often if I hadn't been prepared!
- I'm a dummy and never use the automap even though I got the map powerup and I tend to get lost.
- The caco/spectre fight was my fave. The only downside is that it's kind of a sequel to the lava room right, since they're both mostly about herding and killing cacos with rockets. The pitfalls are nasty but I thought they were cool.
- That last fight... I didn't like it :P Maybe I'm just too bad to appreciate it, because it does seem well designed. But, as you will see if you make it that far through the demo... I just couldn't.
- Was it intentional to have the face of the last lift unpegged? Because I suppose it does cause some disorientation which is an interesting idea. But I don't think it's worth it. ;)
- There was some HOM under the switch on the last elevator.

Pretty impressive for a first wad! I'll certainly check out "map3" sometime soon.

Thanks for the feedback! That was a good watch lol!
- Im not entirely sure how to change up the crate maze without it ceasing to be a crate maze, so i changed up the monster placement a bit.. removed a baron, moved vile closer and put a few chaingunners in front of him..
- Finally found a fence/bar texture that (kinda) aligns up stairways so its now in place on lava room stairs
- You were 'supposed' to be under arachnotron fire in 2nd caco fight, changed the water tower floor heights to allow slightly better enemy movement and better lines of fire
- Had thought to myself that maybe the 6 viles on the final lift were a bit obnoxious, that fda confirmed it.. removed 2 of them and sorted the unpegged texture and HOM

Also finally found out how to compile both maps into a single wad file, so main link updated with single 2 map wad with fixes applied :)

oh hey su07 :)

bemused said:

tested with inf height OFF

ahah! that's what I guessed after I kept getting snagged on cacos and those hanging body things.

guessing this was tested with gl-graphics? there's a gnarly HOM in software:

https://www.twitch.tv/johnsuitepee/v/69961388

My playtest stream of both your maps. In general I see some decent slaughter-mapper type potential from your good self, but map 02 was an awful clusterfuck in my opinion. I could see the way to beat it, but I didn't enjoy executing it.

The second Cacoswarm on map 01 was the highlight of the two maps for me.

Yeah I attempted "map3" for awhile and then at some point lost the will to go on :P I was also using infinitely tall things and also saw the intense HOM.

Glad that Suitepee got you a recording cause mine is really bad. ;)

well.. shit :P that is indeed an impressive amount of HOM in there.. now fixed.. complete overhaul of encounter, removed all initial floating enemies on ledges, replaced with mancs and arachnotrons. teleporting cacos shouldnt have even been teleporting in til 2nd rev room switch press.. fixed also.. changed the hanging corpses to passable ones, so there should be much less getting stuck on stuff this time around

edited to add after watching you struggle through that john, that was amazing :D on first map added teleport linedefs and destination sectors for archviles to ensure they clear the lift.. On 2nd map removed "some" revs, replaced with "some" cybers, also removed about half the cacos that teleport in (now later), to make it less of a grindy chore. its still an unapologetic clusterfuck but its not quite so extreme where the player wont have to be using bfg thru crowds of revs at point blank.. well hopefully not as much anyway.. ifailatmaps.wad v3 now in top post! ^

Map 3 and 4 added! Again.. both require cc4tex, both tested with boom only this time!
Special thanks and mentions to everyone who commented and gave feedback in this thread.. and to D3archi who in about 2 sentences taught me how to use slade :)
Inspiration comes from a mixture of various memorable slaughter fights ive savescummed through over the years :)

Map 1 midi is perfect dark, map 2 is slayer - war ensemble.. map 3 ive totally forgotten but it was used in another wad im sure of it.. maybe someone will recognise it? Map 4 is a midi made by benjogami, who (along with killer5) needs special thanks for help with playtest FDAs
map 3: Imp Halls
http://i.imgur.com/20ZRaY4.png?1
http://i.imgur.com/amlDEH0.png?1

Map 4: Three spires
http://i.imgur.com/ysZdwo4.png?1
http://i.imgur.com/88XD4PJ.png?1
http://i.imgur.com/HUgufEL.png?1

As always, feedback, opinions, FDAs, abuse.. whatever! send it my way! Top link updated with v4!

The last screenshot looks really cool. It somewhat reminds me of some the masterlevels.

Pssst, hey, I think you forgot to move Player 1 back to where it should be. ;)

yep.. thanks for the heads up! literally just realised that after fucking about with some troublesome linedefs.. fixed and link updated!

Played the revised final fight, a few notes:

- The fight is still pretty easy as long as you know about the invulnerability, which makes me think it should be somewhere more obvious but harder to get to, like it needs to be lowered down or something. But this problem might be specific to me cause I'm dumb and didn't find it until dying a few times and deciding to rush down the archviles, even though I was free to explore before the fight!

- Something I forgot to mention from my first playthrough: I got the soulsphere and mega armor and saved before finding out that the megasphere is what triggers the fight. I was pretty sad. Maybe have something else trigger the fight. :(

- And I just realized as I was writing that you can skip the fight entirely if you know where the switches pop up.

thanks for yet more valuable feedback!
-i had thought about the invul being on a 1000 unit high, slow descent pillar.. tried it a few times and just kept getting rekt by the viles and blocked by the rest.. will have a think about that one.
-saw that on the fda and felt sad too.. especially watching you save after lol :( may end up moving the initial teleport destination so the player enters the room from the megasphere corner and have to quickly gain their bearings as they trigger the traps. This also means the player wouldnt know about the invul ;)
-umm.. do you mean skip it by running past it and not killing it all? or not having monsters teleport in at all by going pacifist? will have to have a look at that and sort that out so monsters are awake and teleport as soon as the player exits the megasphere corner

bemused said:

-umm.. do you mean skip it by running past it and not killing it all? or not having monsters teleport in at all by going pacifist? will have to have a look at that and sort that out so monsters are awake and teleport as soon as the player exits the megasphere corner

Without triggering anything, you can go to where the switches raise and use them even though they haven't raised, before getting the megasphere. The best solution (as seen everywhere in Sunder) is to put the switches behind a sector that lowers (also a good timing mechanism). Would be appropriate considering how Sunderesque the room already is. ;)

I tried play you WAD, but I have missing texture. Probably you havent includet texture into WAD. Can you check your WAD (not on editor)?

I too am getting a very strong Sunder vibe and I am not going to argue with that. I'll wait until full release, however.

Also, to the person above, have you loaded CC4 tex with the wad? It says in the first post (probably would help if important information like that is in bold or even provides a URL to the resource, may be worth noting in future), to load the wad with CC4 tex, which is included with the official wad.

thanks for that springy.. yeah, all maps need cc4tex.wad.. OP updated with clearer link, and revised map 4 to *hopefully* stop the possible fight skip ^

holy thread resurrection batman!

maps 5 thru 13 added!

http://i.imgur.com/TJkI2n8.png?1
http://i.imgur.com/AcuxNng.png?1
http://i.imgur.com/sRKQ7uD.png?1
http://i.imgur.com/VRHW5SX.png?1
http://i.imgur.com/hlOpSME.png?1
http://i.imgur.com/vWm8jx1.png?1

MASSIVE amounts of thanks to benjogami, who never says no to hours of grinding away at my badly tuned encounters and has provided some epic FDAs along the way.. top post updated with new link.. although no doubt there will probably be some gamebreaking bug ive missed :P

Am looking forward to playing through this as part of my Sunlust preparation....

maps 14 and half of the start of 15 added, and OP edited^^

A few general things I noticed before I dissect the actual maps:

- You don't indicate which doors are openable and which aren't and often give the same texture to openable and unopenable doors in the same area. That's generally considered bad design because it's confusing and disorienting.

- You sometimes forget to make certain lines impassable, which results in monsters clipping through midtextures where they really shouldn't.

- You have a few cases where the player can get stuck on tiny environmental details while fighting, which is really infuriating. Things like thin pillars, zig-zagging wall details or small 32-high bumps on the floor are best avoided, I feel.

- There's a lot of points in your maps where a switch opens something back in the direction the player came from, with no indication of what just happened. Backtracking is boring enough, but unobvious backtracking is the worst. Generally whatever a switch does should be both easily accessible and visible from the switch room.

Cool stuff. :)

Map 01: I couldn't finish this, I had no idea where to go after the switch in the gray area with the second cacoswarm (no map ever needs two cacoswarms). In general, the Doom E1/Doom2 E1 themed areas in the first part of the map were pretty good, but it should have ended with the foundry battle, it was such a natural endpoint.

Favourite part: the very beginning where you are dropped into a battle with zombies and pinkies. It really sets a mood for the entire map.

Least favourite part: the gray area where I got stuck.

yeah, hopefully there will be less amateur mistakes further through the wad.. tbh im not entierly sure im gonna go thru and retrospectively edit this wad anymore.. theres a few maps (4,9,11,14, and kinda 15) that im generally pleased with how they turned out.. but probably gonna consider the rest as a learning exercise and leave em as they stand, as a reminder of where i started :)

Map 02: A short and sweet slaughtermap, I liked this one much more than the first map. The aesthetic is very reminiscent of Hollow Icon from Sunder, wood and metal with bright red detailing.

The map itself is a single square symmetrical room filled with monsters that fills with reinforcements as you pull switches. The gameplay is frantic fun at first, but slows down a bit once you've killed the first big wave of enemies. I feel like it wouldn't have hurt to have a bit more monsters teleport in with the switches in the Spiderdemon rooms.

Health and ammo are both bountiful, I was deliberately sloppy with my shots and still left wads of both in the map when I left, including a megasphere. This contributed to the feeling of the map winding down as I moved along, as once I cleared out enough enemies that I could move freely, the only things I had to watch out for were stray Cybie rockets.

Favourite part: jeez, that's a tough one, the map is so short and consists of a single room. I'd say the corner rooms opening up and unleashing a flood of Revenants. That really made my life difficult for a while.

Least favourite part: the four Cyberdemons teleporting in after the first corner switch. They're just so pointless.

Map 03: This map introduces a new issue that will continue cropping up in the set, and that's a total lack of consistency in theme. While there are maps, like the previous one, that commit to a single aesthetic and gameplay theme and carry it throughout, many others have a haphazard mix of themes.

This map starts off as a wood-and-brick castle interior with some clever lighting and simple but effective encounters, then the player enters a pretty ugly stock texture cave whose highlight is the bloody Mancubus lair, then a castle exterior that leads into a slaughter fight with similar texturing to Map 02, and finally a red rock cavern with a recreation of one of the first fights from Map 04 of Sunder with the crushers.

Each and every one of these themes could have supported a map on their own (except maybe the first cave, which reminded me of TimeOfDeath's Slaughterfest 3 contributions) but together they just make a huge mess. Picking an idea and sticking to it is a hugely important part of mapping.

Favourite part: the slaughter bits were good, but I have to go with the initial castle part, it was just so clean and well-constructed.

Least favourite part: clashing stock textures only work for TOD because he makes gimmicky maps where the non-standard gameplay is the main draw and the whole ugly vanilla-style cave aesthetic has become a thing with him, a signature style sort of deal.

Map 04: Same as map 03, this felt like you had a pretty great idea, and then for some reason smothered it in more ideas until none of them stood out. Some pretty bland marble catacombs (marble is really hard to make look good on its own, without different textures for accenting it), then a cave, then a skin-covered room, and then a foundry. All of them (except the three small circular rooms in the marble area) could stand on their own but they had very little to do with each other.

The fights were mostly very strictly partitioned apart, and you couldn't really have one fight in a particular room bleeding into another one, which made the different themed areas feel even more separate. At least they didn't really lend themselves to cheesy tactics, except for the skin room which becomes trivially easy if you just run around hugging the walls. The final battle in the foundry area could have been taken straight from Sunder and felt really well-balanced.

Favourite part: the caves. Their actual layout was very simple, but the texture choice and lighting made them look much better. In general, natural areas benefit greatly from using a small number of similar but identifiably different textures and consistent lighting.

Least favourite part: the circular rooms. Every single monster except the shotgunners in the first one was stuck in place, and because of the massive height variation, you couldn't really see anything.

Also, please, never ever make a map again where the route forward is opened up by exploring a random side area that doesn't indicate in any way what it does. That almost ruined the caves for me, and it would have been such a shame.

Map 05: See, now this is the thematic consistency I'm talking about. This is a fairly long map very obviously inspired by ArmouredBlood's New Gothic Movement 1, both in its texturing and its encounter design, both of which stay consistent the entire way through. Eventually the map turns into a sort of inverse recreation of The Hag's Finger from Sunder, climbing a tower from the inside rather than the outside, which actually still just makes New Gothic its inspiration, as that's pretty much the gimmick of Map 6 of that WAD. I haven't noticed any sort of dip in quality or annoying design elements during my playthrough of the map, it's the clear high point of the set so far.

Favourite part: the fight in the yard with the fountain, where the Hag's Finger parallels begin.

Least favourite part: let's see... either the fact that you have to go back to the very beginning to open up the metal barrier in the indoor area, or the difficult jump to the yellow key. Those are the only real frustrating moments I can recall.

Map 06: Another very strong map, this time with a Sunder-esque visual theme with two very distinct texture types mixed in clever ways (in this case dark brick and exposed electronics). Hitscanners are used to great effect as the first wave of enemies in several fights, with Revenants and nobles following close behind. The quality stays mostly consistent throughout the map, which is a bit on the short side. One thing that bothered me was the final fight, which felt like a huge letdown after the massive slaughter just before it.

Favourite part: this was a difficult decision because I loved the curvy room after the rocket launcher, but I think I'll have to give it to the very first area (second screenshot in the OP). It has the cleverest mixing of the two aesthetic themes and the close-quarters fight with a mob of enemies after the whole thing opens up is amazing.

Least favourite part: the final room. Total letdown.

Map 07: I feel like this map might be inspired by some of Phml's earliest maps, but TOD also used all green marble textures in some of his maps and the way you need to use infighting to open up the central arena without firing a shot feels more like something he would do. After you get outside the horde of enemies and pick up the super shotgun, it becomes more of a traditional slaughtermap, but it stays very fun by throwing perhaps the largest number of monsters at you so far. The actual map is very short and symmetrical, but feels longer due to how long it takes to fight through.

Favourite part: the beginning again, which was the tensest moment I've ever had in any map I've played when I realized there were no weapons around.

Least favourite part: an exact repeat of Map 05's stair fight with rockets against Revenants and Spectres? Really?

https://www.twitch.tv/johnsuitepee/v/83642093 = part 1 of my playthrough.
https://www.twitch.tv/johnsuitepee/v/84558061 = part 2.
https://www.twitch.tv/johnsuitepee/v/85865131 = part 3.
https://www.twitch.tv/johnsuitepee/v/86067494 = part 4.
(all UV, pistol starts)

This was one interesting slaughter experience, especially coming from a new mapper. I give this 3.5 out of 5 in summary, and am expecting great massacres from Bemused in the future!

The only thing that really bugged me about this was the lack of health pickups in some of the encounters; sometimes only giving the player a megasphere/soulsphere or a brief initial splurge of medkits before the fights did work fine, but at other times the lack of health during encounters was kind of lame.

Otherwise, the architecture was great and the encounters were mostly varied and challenging.