Acidity Part 1: E1M1 & E1M2

Acidity is a serie of maps I started some time ago for vanilla Ultimate Doom.

At the moment only the first two maps are playable and I like to share them with the Doom community.

Maps were tested with Chocolate Doom, PRBoom (-complevel 2) and Zdoom.

Download link: http://www.mediafire.com/file/jygzi9eczlzsc5h/acdty01.zip

Screenshots:

Texture Packs is CWB by Christopher "shaithis" Buecheler and music is by Prozac+

I hope you enjoy the levels and let me know what you think.

It is good but short. I did it quickly cause those are non-violent type of map that doesnt block your way forward when there is big fight. Also, there are some nice textures worth stealing.

Screenies look great! Will have to give this a play later.

I jumped on this because I remember it from the pictures thread and have been looking forward to it.

e1m1 Despite the proliferation of arcs and circular geometry, and an Epic2 texture theme, I could not escape the thought that I was in a highly transformed reproduction of Doom's E1M1: intentional or not, there were enough subtle similarities to trigger the pattern recognition. The map is simple and straightforward, with some interesting secrets, but little in the way of difficulty. Unfortunately some of the sharp corners formed where arcs meet (e.g. at the conjuction of lines 202,203,205) look like texture misalignments on first impression, despite their correctness; on the other hand, at the vertex where lines 439 and 534 meet, there actually is a misalignment. The monster teleporters take too long to deploy fully. I finished the map in 6:34 with nothing left alive and all secrets found.

e1m2 Continuing the highly disguised iwad map feel, this map's opening seemed highly reminiscent of Doom's E3M1, but turns into something else as you progress. Unfortunately this map's gameplay is not to my taste. After three failed attempts I gave up: at first I foolishly ran into too many shotgunners to survive, second I got quite far but simply ran out of health after too many runs through lava and a surprise teleport to a dangerous area, and third, far earlier in the map, falling off a pillar on the way up to the blue key with not enough health remaining to reach a safe sector. An almost complete lack of health items affording no room for error (up to the blue key: one stimpack inside the first door, one medikit in the middle of a lava lake), slow prolonged battles with the shotgun against high-health monsters leading to tedious play that does not inspire a desire to start over after death, and pillar jumping sequences and nearly unavoidable lava runs, make this map frustrating and unfriendly towards blind runs. There is good work here but I shall have to use savegames or a lower skill to see it. I think the map needs a rebalance, certainly it needs more health. Perhaps it's not intended to pistol-start it.

Demos: http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=40994199166135549884

Proper complevel for UD is 3, by the way, shouldn't make any difference in these maps though.

A demo for e1m2: acdty01_12_rd_cp.zip

A casual playthrough, as maxing it requires more grinding vs. barons than I consider fun. Even with the secret. Every baron from the RK warp onwards doesn't really do anything. Not a fan of the spectres in the lava pit at the second platforming section. Strikes me as a map that would be more fun overall with a berserk pack (which would also double as a healing source). 

Nice curves, though. Good texturing as well.

Thanks you for playing and commenting!

So in order to improve the maps, what you suggest is to:

• add more health
• change some baron with cacos or more imps
• add berserker for fistplay

@RjY you're right. Actually the first map in inspired by original E1M1. It is something like an alternative version. E1M2 was partially inspired by E3M1, but I started adding new stuff while doing it.

@Angry Saint Definitely more health please. I don't mind so much having to grind through monsters with slow weapons as I'm not always wanting to go as fast as possible, but not being allowed to take any damage (slight exaggeration but you get the idea) just makes the thing too frustrating.

7 hours ago, RjY said:

@Angry Saint Definitely more health please. I don't mind so much having to grind through monsters with slow weapons as I'm not always wanting to go as fast as possible, but not being allowed to take any damage (slight exaggeration but you get the idea) just makes the thing too frustrating.

Maybe this is only for very skilled players. But yeah, you need a bit more health.

Remember CRUSADES by Richard Wiles. No room for one mistake in that episode.