The Ledge - Single map for Doom 2

Yes! I remember seeing some pictures of this earlier in the year, it looks fantastic and I'm happy you've got it finished! The big imposing architecture in that first shot is 👍 👍 👍

Looking forward to giving this a playthrough soon!

Bout to play this, just wanted to let everyone know it's in slot 20!

Sorry! Just edited the first post to indicate that haha...

Pretty awesome map. I like that it keeps an engaging level of difficulty while also giving you a few quiet moments to breathe. Too many maps feel exhausting because EVERY encounter is just as intense as the last with no breaks, so its nice to get to play a map with such excellent pacing.

Glad you enjoyed!

The pacing was a bit intentional but also a bit out of laziness. I like how it turned out though, and I might start working this way going forward. Not every key needs to telegraph an obvious trap followed by an epic battle. Sometimes it's nice to just pick up a key and run back through the remains of the battle you already fought.

Great map!I had a lot of fun playing even though i needed to `resurrect alot because i am pretty bad at doom,i really liked how big the map felt and the encounters were a lot of fun (my favorite was the one with the 4 mancubi) and the only bad thing about the map was that it was harder at the start than at the end but maybe i get good over time.I give it 4.5/5 and i would love to play more maps like this one from you :)

Finally got around to finishing it and I loved it. Great ammo placement for the plasma gun and rocket launcher. Always had them when I needed their help! I agree with @Plusw about the pacing, I think that's where the map really excels. It's kind of a long map, but the lulls allow the player to explore for more ammo, health, or armor as needed. 

It's also aesthetically superb, making good use of a variety different color textures so it's never visually boring. I also liked all your arch-vile placement. The twofer towards the end took me by surprise and nearly killed me. I was only expecting one!

Looking forward to your next effort. 

I really like your layouts and the way you 'tier' your maps Pavera, and this is no exception. I had fun. After playing D2TWID i was disappointed to see you haven't actually released that many maps (according to Doomwiki anyway) so it's cool that you're working on more stuff!

Thanks!

Yeah most of my work has been released as pieces of various community projects. I think the list of work on my Doom wiki page (which tbh I didn't even know existed until now!) is incomplete. You can also find work of mine in The Adventures of Square (E1A4 and E1A5), and I am sure there are other places. The funny thing is that I have a HUGE body of unreleased work...so really that page may grow quickly if I ever get around to finishing it all. :P

Nice map! Tough, but a lot of fun. I've always liked hints of things to come. So seeing the very top of an AV head running on the other side of a wall or Mancs far away was cool. I also liked that the two escape teleports from the Blue Key lead to different places, one with goodies. Wasn't expecting that.

Couple things.

1. I had to use the automap cheat after I was done to find the Invulnerability secret. If there was a hint, I didn't see it.

2. Not sure about the Imps in the exit room. Completely ignorable. I ran by them to the exit before I realized where they were.

3. I ran from the Cyber and somehow ended up on the other side of a short wall right across from him. I was able to Plasma him to death while his rockets couldn't get over the wall. I hope that was intentionally designed that way. I really enjoyed it.

4. Three off-map Chaingunners didn't activate and teleport in (linedef tag 33). Their sound/teleport sectors aren't joined with the others.

Good stuff!
 

Really great to see you mapping again Pavera!  The shots looks nice, especially the mood in that first one.  I'll try to give this a spin sometime soon and report my thoughts back to you :)

I'll record this because...why not?

EDIT: I just recorded the map with no deaths and no saves. Fun map overall Pavera!!!

Just finished playing! This map kicked all kinds of ass, and by that I both mean it's fantastic and that I died a lot. Really fun level to play through.

I absolutely loved the layout, you did a masterful job building this. The interconnections are super impressive, and everything looks and feels great.

Thank you for the map!

Glad to hear you liked it! I had a lot of fun building this layout and it's easily one of my favorites of my own work. It was really fun finding all the ways in which I could connect different parts of the map together, like a puzzle. The gameplay was a lot of work because of the open air design, but I think it turned out well enough.

Thanks for playing!

Wow, this was awesome! Excellent work!

I played on UV and got my ass handed to me a lot early on - it was great fun to figure out how to survive the madness at the start. I missed the invuln secret until I cheated, and three chaingunners were a no-show, but 100%ed it otherwise.

Some remarks:

- The aesthetic and the general nastiness reminded me a lot of E4M2, one of my favorite episode 4 levels.

- I love love love the open-air connections between everything. The layout is really inspiring, and I'd be keen to hear what your design process was!

- I associate those blue/red WOODMET switches with the corresponding skull keys, so was surprised when they were just regular buttons.

- After triggering the switch just beyond the yellow door, the fight that followed seemed kinda weak. I just camped in a corner and shot the popcorn enemies as they teleported in one by one, then dealt with the revenants after. Perhaps take (some of) the revenants off ambush, so that they'll come out and harry the player?

- The chaingunners on the ledge right after those revenants are hard to spot, and feel like they'd be a cheap death for players who had scraped through the earlier encounter. There's not a lot of health there, so maybe drop a couple stimpacks inside the room which players could run for to survive the chaingunners?

Well, I didn't even used that invul sphere because I didn't find it and it was unnecessary for me. The soulsphere and the megasphere did the work and that backpack is a lifesaver. I know that the beginning was the hardest part because of all of the surrounding monsters but at least it's manageable. Just being careful with the ammo management and the player will be fine as well as the archviles lying around...those are the first priorities.

FDA good map.

there were 3 monsters that didn't wake up by the end of map.  prboom-plus helped me find a couple of secrets that i probably couldn't have found otherwise

I'll have to fix those sleepy chaingunners. Can't believe I missed a detail like that!

Also, I'm surprised no-one has mentioned it yet, but I still need to implement difficulty settings. In fact, it dawned on me as I posted it yesterday.

@Viggles

Very excited to see you liked the map! Brigandine was an inspiration for me, and is one of my favorite examples of excellent Doom architecture out there.

I like your suggestions, and I'll probably take that into consideration. I was a little concerned about the revenants not coming out to play. Also, some additional health might be a good idea, cause I like the chaingunners there as a nasty surprise.

I'll drop my my FDA here too for convenience. 

Probably my favorite thing about the map is the willingness to use more monsters than strictly necessary, particularly early on. Reminds me of skillsaw (but less dispersed) and Mech's Counterattack to some degree. Love moving down fodder and battling clusters of revenants. It's always cool when a big cluster of low-tiers you leave behind ends up being bunched up in some unexpected way later on. The map is quite appealing visually too. Enjoyed the wealth of nooks and crannies to explore.

While drawing up plans for a casual maxrun, it became clear that rocket ammo distribution was quite backloaded. If I wanted to kill all mid-tiers fought before getting the SSG but without using the single shotgun and chaingun against them too much (if at all), I had to hunt for all the spare rockets and cells laying around. So having 30+ rockets at the end, a very likely outcome, felt weird. You're also right next to the exit at that point, so leaving stuff from earlier behind to kill it later with that surplus isn't so appealing.

The invul secret is fun ('ooh I can just bury myself in all of these hitscanners and not die'), but attaining the megasphere secret felt unnecessarily prolonged, especially since it's not particularly useful at that point anyway. I would have expected there to be a switch or hidden trigger in the building where it's found, which would be somewhat tidier as far as moving around goes.

Anyway, looking forward to the next map(s). :)

Fun map. Good layout, good use of textures, great gameplay. Really looking forward to your next work, Pavera.

This is one of the coolest maps I've played in a long time, excellent work. I love the unconventional architecture and the dastardly use of arch-viles.

After so many positive reviews I decided to give this a play and it was very enjoyable, if somewhat tricky. My only comment that hasn't been mentioned is that I was able to cheese the Cyberdemon encounter really hard. I had a Radiation Suit so I simply dropped down below, got the Cyber to shoot the floor next to the Arachnatron and as the Cyberdemon was aggro'd onto me, the Arachnatron did tons of damage to it.

That feels more like an inventive strategy than a cheese. 

Agreed. @Degree23 that's a cool way to kill the cyber if you ask me! I'm glad that sort of strategy exists there.

5 hours ago, Degree23 said:

After so many positive reviews I decided to give this a play and it was very enjoyable, if somewhat tricky. My only comment that hasn't been mentioned is that I was able to cheese the Cyberdemon encounter really hard. I had a Radiation Suit so I simply dropped down below, got the Cyber to shoot the floor next to the Arachnatron and as the Cyberdemon was aggro'd onto me, the Arachnatron did tons of damage to it.

Nice strategy there m8. All strategies works...

I think it would be considered "cheesing" if somehow you found a way to stand behind a pixel-wide spot where nobody can damage you and pistol-peck the cyberdemon to death for 30 minutes. Though even then, I think I'd be impressed with that level of patience...

I made a video of me trying to play this WAD.

It didn't go so well.

Though I kind of just suck at DOOM.

Hope I didn't scare you off from dooming forever!

Here's another FDA cause why not:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dgyl5g11hkb1l9t/pav-ledge_fda_benjogami.lmp?dl=1

I had a good time :)  Only found 1 secret, but I didn't look very hard.