Iron Keep (Boom) - Final Release

Download Here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/sr47hahydp9ny9n/ironkeep-1.2.rar

Short-mid size non-linear level I've made to try some stuff. Shouldn't be hard for experienced players, taking around 15 minutes to finish it. It features 3 rebalanced monsters (aka faster projectiles), which have different sprites. Tested on zdoom and prboom.

Tell me what you guys think, FDA's are welcome :)

Pics:

Sounds cool, but the screenies look minimally detailed, not that that's a bad thing, though. I'll give it a try when I can (might be a week or so). Love the sky, though.

Though I didn't finish it have a Fda, made on Prboom+ cl9. I liked the map, many nasty hitscanners and way too many lost souls (and it seems that you like to put them :P).

cl 9 skill 4 FDA with saves!

I think you undersold the difficulty a bit, or else I'm not very experienced. ;)

~31 minutes in-game time, with quite a few deaths. Probably most of the time bloat is from getting lost, because I was intermittently distracted, and the demo spans a few play sessions and a few days. I'm also bad at orienting myself in general, especially as nonlinearity increases.

Notes:

- The different projectile speeds really threw me off!

- Health and ammo seemed very carefully balanced to keep me in constant scrounge mode.

- I really liked the midi a lot.

- I enjoyed the climactic end fight.

- I had a lot of trouble finding places I had been before. Like I said, that's something I'm bad at in general, but I feel like the various teleports were especially disorienting.

- I liked the look of the map.

Hey, I'll post some demos when I get a complete playthrough. The cyber fight at the end is much harder than the rest, unless maybe there's a BFG secret I didn't find. That one killed me somewhat unceremoniously!

I enjoy the new monsters. That caco's fireball speed is hilarious, but man, it does basically no damage. You can afford to have it do slightly more damage, because it's quite easy to dodge by simply moving very slowly as a default.

Thank you people!

Here's a new version, which I've toned down some encounters according with feeback, so I think things will flow better (it's very small changes though):

http://www.mediafire.com/download/9skk58we2a9rdo7/ironkeep-1.1.rar

Fonze: Yeah, I'm not really a fan of giving too much detailing, though I'm also not good at doing it without going to much polluted haha

Gaspe: Thanks for the fdas! :D I think you did a very good job playing very carefully haha Unfortunaly you got unlucky with that last Caco ball, since there was still lots of medikits remaining in surrouding areas. About lost souls, yeah, I like them haha, I think they're quite versatile monsters, though a bit annoying, but they offer more threat than boring pinkies hahahahah

Benjonami: Watching the FDA's, I agree with you hehe. I'm not really skilled player though, watching you FDA I see that you play better than me, but knowing the layouts before helps a lot, I guess. People say that my maps aren't hard though.

rdwpa: Can't wait for the demos haha About the cyber fight, I normally spend all plasma ammo, then finish the cyber with super shotgun, Rocket splash damage makes navigating really hard.

Here's a failed fda. Somehow my mouse sensitivity wasn't configured properly at the beginning, then i admit i sucked a bit. Probably it is on hmp since i didn't specified the skill level from the prompt.
It was a fun ride, i'll try to beat it later.

Also fuck those cacoes.

Edit: forgot to say i used the new version to record the fda.

Gave this a whirl today (original version) and had plenty of fun. I find that you're often fickle with your health placement which isn't exactly fitted to my reckless playstyle, but you make the most out of your layout and enemies. I think texturing is alright—it's nothing fancy but the variety works—though you have a metal texture on the ledge with the shell box in the cyber room that should probably be a rock texture [and make the lava -20% if it's unescapable pls]). I think perhaps the caco projectiles are a bit too fast too (it should be like 1.5 regular speed, not 2 or whatever it is). I'd definitely be interested in seeing what a level set from you would play like, since you're pretty good with making tough non-linear maps.

Thank you everyone!

Cacowad: Nice, i was fun to watch the FDA, You did like 85% of the level in your last attempt haha, though the final fight is the hardest one, I guess. (but in HMP you have the BFG which should help a lot)


dobu gabu maru: Thanks! I'll change that texture on cyberdemon room, and see what I can do with Caco's projectile. I've reduced his health by 25% originally so he doesn't feel "too heavy" to kill and make the faster projectile fair. Since I'm getting conflected feedbacks about it, I'll have to think on something lol

About level sets, I actually have 2 with somewhat similar design goals. One which I've finished, called Nevasca ( https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/m-o/nevasca - 9 levels) , but this is harder and zdoom-only, and another I'm working on and which has 20 levels done (goal is 32 levels done - https://www.doomworld.com/vb/wads-mods/74912-reclipse-episode-iv-released-version-4-1/3/ ).

I think for now I'll work on some standalone ideas and see where I can improve haha

This is the final release before going to the archives:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/sr47hahydp9ny9n/ironkeep-1.2.rar

- Cacodemon rebalanced:
Health 300 -> 250
Fireball damage 5 -> 7
Speed reduced a bit

- Demons are a bit faster

- Cyberdemon arena has bigger columns, so now its going to be easier to prevent the other cyberdemon to hit you

- MIDI fixed

- Others very small fix

http://www.mediafire.com/download/f6pada6t99a5ah1/ironkeep_rileymartin.lmp

Just recorded my first FDA for shits and to see how it's done. Played like crap, almost cleared the map and instantly died to a Cyber rocket after the yellow door. This is what it looks like when someone doesn't know how to play Doom! I almost never play GLBoom+ so everything from the movement to the mouse precision felt off to me. Great visuals and music though.

rileymartin said:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/f6pada6t99a5ah1/ironkeep_rileymartin.lmp

Just recorded my first FDA for shits and to see how it's done. Played like crap, almost cleared the map and instantly died to a Cyber rocket after the yellow door. This is what it looks like when someone doesn't know how to play Doom! I almost never play GLBoom+ so everything from the movement to the mouse precision felt off to me. Great visuals and music though.

I think you did a pretty good job! You have played very carefully and always kept the pickups in check. Also, you are the first to find all the secrets haha I was starting to think that the soulsphere secret wasn't giving enough hint, since no one "discovered" it, well, until now!

About the Cyberdemon fight, well... I probably won't try to do something like that again lol

I recorded an exit demo (the day after my first post, and another recently). But I was hestitant to post it because I've been loathing the idea of being called 'cautious'. :D The irony is now I've been cautious about being called cautious.

Here's a demo for the most recent version: http://www.mediafire.com/download/mmgsfu8m0e9wav4/ironkeepv12_rdwpa_playthrough.lmp

The cyber fight (even in its original form) isn't really that huge of a difficulty spike on paper. The most problematic part of it was actually the inescapable pit, the one at the corner of the room near where the wall originally lowers. It's very easy to just flat-out not see it.

Anyway, I like the level; there are an absolute ton of ways to play it. Monsters can path around in really surprising ways. In this playthrough there was one point where I got off a teleporter and landed in a complete clusterfuck of monsters that had somehow decided to gather for dinner in the same spot. There are also spots where you can just fire your chaingun nonstop for a quarter-minute and kill a low-tier monster every second, which amuses me.

The new enemies are fine as a one-time thing, but I think the caco looks very silly. Ultra-bright blue ball with ridiculously fast projectiles. Kind of looks like it's wearing make-up. :D

Well, I don't think there's much problem in being cautious hahaha, actually I think is a good thing. I like to see that people pay attention to details and corners when playing a level. Rileymartin, for example, played super-cautiosly and by observing the enviroment was able to find all the secrets in his first fda. It remembers me somewhat Dark Souls (which is a game I really love), where the players are rewarded going slow and observing the environment.

In other hand, though, I don't think players need to be prevented from rushing though. If a player is more skilled and is confident to rush, well, why not? So that's why I like do add some shortcuts or avoid the players from going into a death trap haha

Anyway, I was impressed with your demo hahaha I didn't know you could keep the chaingun firing that way for so long time in some setpieces hahaha Also you took some very different routes, it was cool to see how the level would "react" in these cases.

About the new monsters, the blue Caco is certainly a one-thing only hahaha I wanted to change it a bit to see how it would behave being less of a bullet-sponge enemy and more an agressive attacker but with less health pool. I think it worked well, but needs more adjustements (especially the blue thing, which I think it's from tormentor667)