Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
RottKing

Steep Town 1.0 Release

Recommended Posts

As I told you already, I love this map. Scaling the pit and getting involved in the fight up top is really one of the most interesting "intro sets" to a map I've played and the copious amount of zombiemen shuffling around everywhere requires a heightened sense of your surroundings

Share this post


Link to post

Played via glboomplus, UV, 100% secrets found.

 

First of all, loved the visual style. You brought about this convincing city environment through texture choice and architecture while having this classic feel to the whole thing. I also appreciate the spacious interiors during some firefights. The initial fights on my way up from the lower pit had some neat scenarios; using the surrounding enemies as cover to get close to a Arachnotron with my SSG. Then having to deal with not only several distant Mancubi, but also staying conscious to the chaingunners being right ol' pests. Combat was generally on point, had just enough bite for its monster count to remain a fun romp without ever feeling tiresome - I think the midi choice helped a lot in that regard. The main outdoor segment punished poor awareness but offered several options to tackle opposition; found myself retreating inside often but also took advantage of enemy fire to weaken the offensive.

 

Overall Steep was honestly a great experience, it ticked all the right boxes for me - from the early climb upward to reaching the peak of one building, then jumping back down to explore other buildings and tie up loose ends. That sense of scale just brings everything together. Also bonus points for a certain Revenant.

 

Cheers for the release!

Share this post


Link to post

Looks like a nice map,..

 

but, when i add complex doom the rl at start does not appear on that "desk" thing.... making it quite hard to make it up the second lift (well i never really got foot on that second elevator, cause near instakill by mancubi like ennemies).

 

can you fix that, would love to play this map with complex doom...

 

(oh ya, played it on zandronum 2.1.2 in multiplayer mode -> i'm even hosting it as we speak)

 

 

Share this post


Link to post

I just looked into it, and it seems somehow a few Things (including the rocket launcher) had the Boom flags Not Deathmatch and Not Cooperative on.... I have no idea why those were checked off but I fixed it now.

Share this post


Link to post

Played this earlier today, lots of fun. Love the extreme vertical scale, one of my favorite characteristics of idtech1. Schweet track, too, Ralphis. Makes me think of Streets of Rage or the like, which of course is totally appropriate! FDA recording: Uptown, boyz (skill 4)

 

Since this is intended to be the final version, there's not a whole lot to say--no bugs, flow problems, balance issues, anything like that. Lost souls who appear before the player reaches the top level pose a risk for some pronounced infinitely-tall shenanigans should s/he drop back down to the start, but since there's only like 4-5 of them anyway it's really not a big issue.

 

If I had to pick on something, it might be that the final battle is pretty easy to just choke out within seconds given the generous ammo supply; having some of the revenants and/or viles all port away to the other parts of the field while most remain to block the switch might give it a shot in the arm. Having a second cyb in there (with porting interference monsters as well) also occurred to me, but I reckon this is probably beyond what the map is aiming to do/be, and I doubt too many folks will take issue with the end fight the way it already is anyway, so w/e.

 

Certainly would recommend this to the curious, it's a nice affable 15 minute romp or so with big personality.

Share this post


Link to post

Just watched your demo, you handled the map pretty dang well and had a pretty large ammo surplus, I'm almost wondering if I should put two cyberdemons at the top level on hard instead of one, or at least beefing up the monster count slightly. Also you might be right about the end fight, I mostly just put all the ammo there to make sure players have enough resources to deal with a revenant horde + archvile, but it might be better if I spice it up a bit. Thanks for the feedback!

Edited by RottKing

Share this post


Link to post

Are you going to upload this to /idgames/ after fixing any lingering issues? The map looks great by its screenshots.

Share this post


Link to post

I got the chance to play this as well,

 

6 hours ago, Demon of the Well said:

Uptown, boyz

UB on top ;p

 

 

My FDA was entirely too long and started off on the wrong note, heh, with a handful of deaths in the beginning; (and not nearly as interesting as DotW's) it wound up at a little under 35 minutes long. Sorry about that lol; don't feel the need to watch it, or feel free to skip most of the bad parts (the whole thing) lol. I did kill everything and get both secrets, but I missed I think 6 items. I resorted to saves after dying embarrassingly to the cyber fight a couple times; I could feel myself getting flustered and repeating the beginning to get to there, to try to figure the angles I was getting attacked from seemed like it wouldn't help the... flustering. Still, shitty that I did that. I only loaded the game one time, but I did save a couple more times later just in case.

 

I took the chance while typing this up to watch DotW's FDA as well; great run! I liked the master plan revolving around the barrel against the far wall fighting against that rev on the lift, hehe, but in all seriousness it's always entertaining to watch your demos :)

 

Also, I really enjoyed the fun midi; great job with it Ralphis!

 

Back to the map: I too loved the verticality of this map; really clever layout, too, with the later portion of the map surrounding the inside portion, that inside portion forming a nice gap in the middle of the top level. It's cool that the verticality served to make each level of the beginning portion feel like 'the highest point in the map,' so to speak and you did a great job texturing with textures that don't look terrible vertically tiled.

 

Monster placement and encounter structure felt just grand, especially from this map's beginning and first impression, with each new level presenting a sort-of arena-puzzle to be tackled. Starting off with the imp mob plus (just barely enough) rockets is always a comical way to kick things off and I like that the sense of large groups continued into the map proper. The next two encounters were small-scale, but also fun and potentially deadly, while being fairly easy to manage. Good warm-up, I suppose, for the cyber battle. The second encounter was kinda neat, with the arach pressuring the player from the middle as bulls pressure from the sides. My first run the bulls made it around to the arach and distracted him on my approach, which was kinda funny to me. I liked the lost souls and token imps used here too. Up from that was another cool encounter, with the CGrs pressuring the player from taking the mancs from afar.

 

After that was perhaps the highlight of this wad: the cyber encounter. Now, as I road up the lift I could see the sector-ceilings on distant buildings and walls against the sky; I knew I was finally reaching the top. The view went from what could be called plain in the first portion, going up each level (though with each level the visuals became more interesting), to beautiful. The roar of the cyber brought me back to reality enough to know to get moving as soon as I was able, but with each inch I rose the visuals became that much more distracting, in a good way. This portion of the map is where the whole verticality of it really sets in (as it often does at great vantage points) and you can just see so much detail going on with the openness and structure(s) of the overall area. Of course you then reach the top and 'hey, monsters galore; time to fight!' but that was just a really cool climax to the climb up. Loved the zombiemen horde, too, heh. Good use of height variation for the pressure applied to the player. Lotta things in this encounter to prioritize and a lot going on both architecturally/visually and in terms of finding the pressure-origins; it was fun to disassemble! Would have been nice if I had found the PG at this point in the map, but I realized quickly that the imps didn't come out if I didn't approach their area, so I wound up avoiding that and unknowingly losing the PG for most of the map. But I did get to fight an imp horde later in the map so... win? I think so.

 

Now, this all said, I should note that this map is front-loaded in terms of its difficulty, which isn't a bad thing in my book. After the main pieces in the cyber encounter are removed, this map gets a lot easier. Couple AVs and CGrs that are tough to avoid a shot from, but most things tone down considerably after this point.

 

I went for the RK path first, so I'll start with that. I'd like to note here, btw, and I'm sure you already know this, that the AV+CG fight with the barrels and whatnot, is skippable by just going through the window outside where the CGrs are. I explored the path in my FDA, after the fact of course >.< Though I suppose you would still have to deal with the AV if you ran straight to the window first, but in a hallway with HKs behind him and plenty of cover for the player through the door the entered from, which would trivialize him to a degree. I will say though that I liked the AV fight downstairs with the CGrs and all that jazz.

 

Moving on, I liked that there was some fun incidental combat to keep the action up as the player traverses the path towards the RK. I should have grabbed the key first, but of course trap and all that, then I got distracted by the secret, lol. The RK trap, while fairly tame, was a quick and fun little thing. While it might not be worth the effort, it could be cool to raise an invisible platform outside the window there temporarily and teleport in one additional caco to get at the player from outside as they deal with the caco+PE inside. The secret there (as well as the other one) was fairly easily spotted, but that's not a bad thing. I liked the bit of incidental combat, once again keeping action up, inside the secret and at this point I encountered the imp mob I skipped earlier. Kind of unfortunate that they all funneled to one door, though; perhaps they could use a revealed teleport for players that don't release them earlier on, or some other way of flanking the player? Still, gotta love imp mobs :)

 

From here the only thing left is the other path; watching DotW's demo now I see that the imps could be best dealt with by getting those barrels immediately, but I did something else since I didn't want to go that route when I opened the door, heh. Good collection of mobs and of course the barrels there. Going towards the lift, I thought something was fishy about that random piece of wall coming from the ceiling; turns out it was hiding a rev, lol. Kinda funny that both DotW and I left the barrel on the far wall alive for possible use and we both killed it before moving on, though he was more determined than I to put it to good use, heh.

 

The caco+bull+PE encounter afterwards was a fun, light fling. Fun in the sense that the mobs work well with each other and the environment, in addition to the fact that there is some good pressure put on the player in the forms of being forced to move, fear of getting cornered, and then 'oh crap a PE just came out back there.' When I got here, I wound up not firing until making my way around back to see the PE, but working my way around there and watching DotW's demo I can see what could happen, since the PE isn't deaf. Cool, if rather tame, encounter :)

 

After this is the one AV that could be argued as bullshit, (and he shouldn't have hit me; if I had kept the stream on him the whole time he would have died first after the initial stun) but it's kinda clear that this is an 'equip PG here' -type of spot, as well as that both doors would open simultaneously. Still, given the lack of cover from the AV, nice that the other direction was just bulls, which is enough meat to force the player to deal with the AV, but a small enough amount to where getting through after the AV is dead is quick. I liked this area up here; cool to work my way around the back and get the mobs inside to infight a bit. Might have been fun to just run straight in, though. Funny HK placement immediately behind the door, as well as the zombieman on the lift, heh.

 

I'm assuming the invul was for this next fight? Neither the room it's in nor the following area really were heavy enough to warrant its placement, though it did help for that following encounter. Strange placement of an invul sphere, but perhaps better for balancing than a BA or a SS. I almost have to say a backpack would have been better, though, even though the increased stores of ammo would be totally unnecessary at this point. That aside, the next area was pretty cool, with pressure from the mancs slowly closing in from the side as the player deals with the immediate area. The CGr atop the crates was cruel, lol; the shotgunner on the other side of the window was funny, though.

 

The ending was a bit of a let down in retrospect, though I found it to be fun at the time. The group of arachs was alright, and while I always love a giant mosh pit of revs, I do have to agree with DotW on teleporting a small handful of them out around the area. Hell, I could have gone for another cyber at that part (maybe replace the AV with cyber, then give all revs a teleport-out, leaving only the cyber left in front), or even a giant cacoswarm from the back sides.

 

Visually this map was very interesting, helped a great deal by the verticality of it but also because of the great detailing done to each area. The layout was clever, as I said before, and aside from the later parts taking place around the former, I liked the way each path deposited you back into the main area. My only two nitpicks on the flow of map progress are running all the way back around to the RK after taking the secret first (which is so dismally minor as to be of no real note) and the switch to reveal the final red door + the arachs guarding it didn't allow the action to be observed or related to anything. Perhaps a unique, token marker by the lowering wall and another by the switch could clue players in to what's going on.

 

 

Once again, I had a ton of fun on this fantastic map; great job here RottKing! I look forward to your next work :)

Share this post


Link to post

I really like well put together city maps and this is no exception.  I love the sense of openness this map brings to the table and the long ranged battles with arachnotrons is nice touch too.  I did run into a problem where a mancubus was stuck on some stairs but idk if thats a map placement problem or he somehow got stuck there after getting hit by a missile.

Other than that I give this map a 10/10.

Share this post


Link to post
13 hours ago, RottKing said:

I just looked into it, and it seems somehow a few Things (including the rocket launcher) had the Boom flags Not Deathmatch and Not Cooperative on.... I have no idea why those were checked off but I fixed it now.

Cool!

 

I will try it out tonight. Hope I have some people showing up for a nice journey.....

Share this post


Link to post

Nice looking map, I love city maps. Maybe it's just me playing too much BTSX lately speaking, but I wouldn't have minded a couple hundred more monsters on UV :) Had I made this myself, I think I couldn't have resisted making some more windows in those high-rise buildings and at some point through the progression release a bunch of flyers into the central area. Oh well, a fun play it was, albeit a little easy :)

 

Oh yeah, stats: finished in 35:30, 0 deaths, 104% kills, 98% items, 50% secrets and exiting with 50 rockets / 300 cells inventory, 200 more cells and a bunch of rockets left behind. Found the Invuln secret after cleaning out the arachs guarding the red door, so I ran straight into the exit and rocketed the revs/av wihout knowing what was coming.

Edited by Uncle 80

Share this post


Link to post
21 hours ago, Glaice said:

Are you going to upload this to /idgames/ after fixing any lingering issues? The map looks great by its screenshots.

yeah i'll upload the revised one once I do it. Thanks for the feedback guys, I'll see about adding some more monsters in places, probably won't go too crazy though

Share this post


Link to post

Gave it a whirl, too. Cool map, that's a rather unusual and creative take on the city theme, and the way this map keeps expanding both vertically and horizontally without the usual nauseating aspect of overt reliance on verticality in Doom maps is surely interesting. Nice usage of stock textures, relatively minimalistic but still pleasant to look at, even though it becomes evident on the upper levels of the map mostly. Good work!
Here's an FDA but I've probably made it too long and sloggy with my actions, so...

steeptown_dem_FDA.zip

Share this post


Link to post

Is there an estimated length playing through this level would take?

Share this post


Link to post

20-25 minutes with no deaths, some of us were a bit higher though, but certainly under an hour.

 

The difficulty is front-loaded so once you make it a little bit in things ease up and deaths are far less likely.

Share this post


Link to post

Here's a casual max in 13:30 (somewhat languidly paced, mostly for relaxation) if you want another demo. 

 

I found the fights at the beginning to be somewhat dull -- lots of waiting on lifts, kind of a shooting gallery. I would have liked to see the lifts be a lot faster, using Boom generalized stuff (1 second, Turbo, etc.), which would also make the map a lot more coop-friendly, with shorter delays if there are any deaths.

 

After the slow start, the rest of the map has some spots where you can get trade safety for aggression and fun, and there are lots of possibilities for interesting monster pathing, and it was a nice map to relax to. Those distant snipers on the same plane as the player allow for some fun kills. The layout is very cool, as mentioned. An unintended consequence of the vertical layout: monsters can block you on the jump to the soulsphere secret, and on some of the drops out of the windows back into the main area (although in the second case, when you know the map it's probably possible to always drop to a safe spot).  

 

Edited by rdwpa

Share this post


Link to post

Pffft could've totally gone sub-13:30 if you had just punched those barrels... ;D Nah great run and a good sense of timing!

 

That cyber kill though... rofl. 4shockblast would be proud... if it were only lost souls that did it.

Share this post


Link to post
2 minutes ago, Glaice said:

Overall, by the screenshots make me think of Planisphere 2.

It's not even remotely like Planisphere 2. Just play it, it's good! Takes 15-20 minutes, at most.

Share this post


Link to post

Is the first thing a Quake e4m8 reference?  I cant help but compare the two...

That said, Ill save this little guy for something I tend to do around November...ish

Share this post


Link to post
4 hours ago, Demon of the Well said:

It's not even remotely like Planisphere 2. Just play it, it's good! Takes 15-20 minutes, at most.

The city scape look made me think of it, and I saw someone get through PS2 in like 20-25min.

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×