Doom 2: The Back Door [Now with 4 maps!]

Working Title - Doom 2: The Back Door

Built with Doom Builder 2, tested in Chocolate and GZ Doom (so it should work with... everything, possibly).

Recommended settings: No jumping, no crouching, no freelook.


EDIT: Wad updated! 2 new maps, with the first 2 updated considerably.


*** Story ***

When the Hell-ship arrived, you missed it. You were out on patrol in the searing heat of the [redacted] desert, a few miles from the base, a thousand miles from anywhere important. There's really no heroic way to put it; you work in the ass end of nowhere. Security for the UAC's fourth largest [redacted] on Earth. Which is to say, the UAC's smallest [redacted] on Earth. You guard this gaping sphincter of a facility from... rocks. And dirt. Sometimes a wandering hippy, waving a sign about nuclear waste or... bombs or some shit.

So there you were, out on patrol, listening to your partner drone on about his long-distance relationship, when the jeep just dies. Battery flat. Weird, right? But there was something more. Maybe you could feel it, sense it. Maybe you're just intuitive like that. Then again, maybe it was the nightmarish screams of agony and hatred hissing over the radio. Whatever, you and your partner set off for the base. On foot.

By the time you got there, sweating like pigs, the place was belching black smoke. Which was pretty unusual for a Tuesday. So you and your partner drew weapons and stepped into the airlock at the back of the base.

It happened fast. The freak must have slipped in through a maintenance hatch, because he attacked from behind. Your partner had to play hero, knocking you out of harm's way as a fireball roared through the air. He fought. He blasted the freak... and hit the door in the process.

So now you're stuck. Stuck in the ass end of the UAC's most ass end facility, your partner's corpse staring back at you from the crack beneath the busted door. The prick called shotgun, literally, so all you have is a pistol.

Still... you've had worse days.


*** Current Maps ***

01 - Rear Entryway
02 - Rio Redacted
03 - Circling the Drain
04 - Flushed

All maps have custom music. I don't claim that it's particularly *good* custom music (it was composed for the GS Wavetable, for the sake of standardisation), but I did make it.


*** Notes ***

I'm aiming to create a vanilla-styled full singleplayer campaign. That is to say, all the maps are being designed for Chocolate Doom (but also tested in GZ and a few mods, just in case).

It also means I'm sticking to all the old limits. No fancy stuff. No slopes, no portal tricks, no scripting... not even any custom linedef actions. I'm even sticking to the old save size limit. The idea is to see just how much detail I can squeeze out of the old engine.



*** Terrible Screenshots ***

http://imgur.com/a/NgYPh

*** Outdated gameplay video of the first 3 maps ***

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD5kaJMuuL8




*** DOWNLOAD ***

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7885274/TBD.wad

Readme:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7885274/readmeTBD.txt

Quite interesting detailing everywhere and the custom music creates a nice mood. On Map01 a zombie and a demon were stuck in each other. Here are the demos of my playthrough if you want.

Incidentally, if anyone could explain to me why monsters keep walking *over* teleport linedefs without teleporting, that'd be great. I'm having to double up on teleport lines just to ensure the bastards do what they're told. And yes, the line is facing the right way.

Hmm. Well, a monster can't teleport if the teleport destination is currently occupied. You could speed up the process by placing more destinations (every destination needs to be in a sector with a unique tag, you can't just put like three in the same sector).

I like how on Map02 you're using different rock textures for the ones under the sun and the ones in the shadow, I think that's rather clever.

Difficulty is overall very low imo, which can be okay for early maps, and it allows you to concentrate on the exploration more than on fighting. But maybe it still could be a bit higher.

kuchitsu said:

Well, a monster can't teleport if the teleport destination is currently occupied.

This is correct. A teleporting player can telefrag monsters and other players standing on the teleport destination, but a teleporting monster can't telefrag anything (unless the map slot is MAP30) and so it won't teleport at all if it would collide with something if the teleportation happened.

I feel like you could significantly enhance the atmosphere by adding a custom sky. I understand if you want to use iwad textures only, but perhaps you could make an exception just for the sky because it can really mean a lot.

Btw, this is thread number 88888.

@kuchitsu

Thanks, that makes sense. Thought it would be something along those lines (re: teleports). I guess the only solution then is to keep using multiple teleport lines, or make the monsters form an orderly queue.

As for the difficulty, I was basing it on the difficulty of the original first two maps at Hurt Me Plenty... thought I'd start there. The problem I've encountered though is my second map's open spaces. Due to the limitations of the monster AI, larger spaces make the fights much easier, and the only solution appears to be "add more monsters".

In order to keep a vanilla pacing to the maps, I'm trying not to add too many monster types too early. Maybe I can offset this by adding more ambushes. Looking at the original maps, the challenging moments tend to stem from multiple angles of fire.

Oh, and the custom sky thing... I don't have a problem with using custom textures. I just haven't figured it out yet. I could probably throw together a sunny desert sky (blue might be a nice contrast for all the brown), but I have to read up on *how*. I know how to use XWE, but I'll need to get the image dimensions/format etc.

Thanks a bunch for the feedback! I'll keep working at it.

Height of a sky texture should be exactly 128 pixels, otherwise it won't look properly when vertically tiled. Width should be a number that is a power of 2, minimum 2 pixels and maximum 1024 pixels - 1024 would be a full 360° panorama, 512 would be a 180° panorama tiled twice around, 256 would be a 90° panorama tiled four times around, etc. The graphic should be in "Doom format", but you can make it in any format (preferably PNG) and convert in to Doom format in SLADE3. On that note, you should be using SLADE3 instead of the outdated and bugged XWE.

Played the first map a bit and liked it.

The custom music reminds me of the first Terminator movie, which I guess is a good thing. Definitely a nice touch!

JohnnyTheWolf said:

The custom music reminds me of the first Terminator movie, which I guess is a good thing.

Not sure if I'll be able to keep to that style. I'm a bit random with my compositions. Weirdly, I sat down and wrote the music for the third map before *making* the third map...and it kinda turned out like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N-JGCMQUOc

FDAs from me: https://www.doomworld.com/vb/attachment.php?postid=1628012

I don't have much to add apart from what kuchitsu said. I liked it but found it pretty easy. Though I did die once in the first map after walking into the broken elevator to see what was down there and not getting out fast enough.

I made a sky pack a while ago, I don't think it has anything desert-like in it, but feel free to take a look if you want. https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/graphics/plmsky1

Out of curiosity, how do you get the goodies half-hidden behind an UAC panel in MAP 01? I figured out every secret but this one.

As for MAP 02, well, the architecture is nice, but it feels very empty as it is. I think it could use much, much more enemies standing in the open, especially in the many large areas; for example, I was kind of disappointed to encounter so few Pinkies inside the tunnels near the end. Also, maybe you could add higher-tier enemies as well, like Cacodemons, some Hell Knights here and there or even a few Barons of Hell.

To a lesser extent, the same goes for MAP 01 too: level design is fine, but there is not enough enemies to fight.

JohnnyTheWolf said:

To a lesser extent, the same goes for MAP 01 too: level design is fine, but there is not enough enemies to fight.

In the context of the *original* first two maps, do you guys think this is true? Because that's what I'm aiming for here - these are the first two maps of what I'm hoping will be a pretty fully-length series. So I was trying not to throw any more stuff at you than you'd encounter in the original first two maps (on Hurt Me Plenty).

The other tricky thing is that I'm trying not to add anything bigger than pinkies and spectres - I'm planning on introducing weapons/enemies at the same kind of rate the original game did. So the earliest you see a revenant, for example, is map 6.

Maybe I could add more demons to the trenches section of map 2 though... since it has the whole "defensive line overrun" vibe.

Oh, as for the UAC panel secret...

Thanks for the tip.

For the record, I beat both maps on Ultra Violence with no difficulty at all.

JohnnyTheWolf said:

Thanks for the tip.

For the record, I beat both maps on Ultra Violence with no difficulty at all.

Technically, you beat them on Hurt Me Plenty, because I haven't placed any monsters above that skill level yet.

Which is maybe something I should have actually mentioned in the lengthy notes above, DOH! Well, whatever... I'm now reviewing the demos and making adjustments to the base difficulty.

Interesting to note that kuchitsu couldn't resist "sitting" on the sofa in the TV room. Also kuchitsu is a complete bastard for clever sniping with the shotgun, so I have to adjust some architecture >.<

EDIT: Plums also sat in the sofa. I think I've found an exploitable weakness here; people will sit on sofas in games.

This is really quite great, design-wise. These days I'm starting to like maps that make me stop and ask "What is this?" or think "Ooh, this is cool" instead of being all abstract.

I'm not a fan of arbitrary impassable lines, e.g. in the ocean -- these break immersion.

Some FDAs recorded last night: http://www.mediafire.com/download/gi4hdqus8gpbe9h/tbdp1_rdwpa_fdas.rar

I'm actually going to rewatch them to savor the visuals a bit more. :)

rdwpa said:

I'm not a fan of arbitrary impassable lines, e.g. in the ocean -- these break immersion.

Yeah, I noticed that too.

Also, I wonder if it is possible to make the large elevator go up again; I missed a secret the first time and I was frustrated I could not revisit the earlier parts of the level. If it cannot be done, then at least add some sort of secret teleporter to allow the player to return to the map's beginning.

rdwpa said:

I'm not a fan of arbitrary impassable lines, e.g. in the ocean -- these break immersion.

Download the wad again. Updated it already to fix a few things/bump up the difficulty etc (map now has actual UV-specific enemies).

Added some *very* new scenery at the end of the second map that might interest you.

AND... I replaced the placeholder "don't go out to sea" impassible with a grilled tunnel that isn't so jarring.

@JohnnyTheWolf -

I'm in two minds about that. I'm tempted to let the player get back up top via teleporter... but then again. The two secret side-spaces you spot going down: the entire point of them being secret when they're so obvious is that it's a narrow window of opportunity. In order to grab both, you have to react pretty quickly and leap off the lift in time. If I let the player go back up, then those secrets kinda lose their "skill" aspect.

I'll give it some thought - if anyone else is annoyed by this, I'll throw in a secret teleporter somewhere.

It's generally good practice to create new versions of wads via "Save As" when you've already uploaded them publicly, so that you can refer to older versions when people post demos for them. For example, I might not feel like replaying the new versions so soon, and when I post demos I consider them 90% of my feedback.

Also, wrt the secret thing, it's important not to conflate "skill" with "a natural predisposition to one arbitrary action over another given limited info".

For example, I'd replace: "In order to grab both, you have to react pretty quickly and leap off the lift in time" with "In order to grab both, you have to decide that seeing what's in those cubbies is more important than staying prepared to quickly kill the surely escalating threats that are popping out of the corners."

People make this mistake all the time with tenuous hints. For example: "The light near this door is green and the light near the other door is red, so obviously a skilled player will take the hint that going into the red door will lead to an instant death trap." (This example is a caricature of course but it reflects that sort of mistake well.)

Anyway, demos. I actually DID feel like replaying the maps this time. I grabbed the secrets this time but they were pointless.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/4i45kn51vchnsch/tbdv2_0102_rdwpa_demos.rar

Wrt the difficulty, I'm not a fan these days of the implication that easy = a negative and hard = a positive, at least not in itself. I like maps like these: challenging combat isn't the focus, but it's not boring either -- the spacious layout allows you to zoom around and feel cool while shooting stuff.

I don't think the extra enemies increased the difficulty that much, but they improved the gameplay by decreasing the number of lulls in the action. Or maybe it just felt that way because I knew where to go. :D

What if I linked the two lift alcoves with a passage + teleport of their own? So basically, whichever hole you risk leaping into, you gain access to both... with the added reward of basically jumping down to the bottom whenever you feel like it. That way if you're determined to get all the secrets, there will be something waiting for you, without punishing you for attempting *both*.

Or I could simply not count them as secrets. But I was trying to reward people who actually took the leap, since I figured they'd be trying to access those alcoves on subsequent runs anyway.

Been rather distracted by reality for a while, but I'm back at it.

Wad updated with two new maps and a multitude of fixes for the first two!

Feedback would be appreciated, especially concerning balance issues/difficulty.