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Lorenz0

Unhappy Expedition

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Unhappy Expedition is a single map for Doom 2. It's the largest map I've ever created, but still may not be up to what is considered a large map in this community. It's a slaughter inspired level, but is nowhere near the difficulty of most slaughtermaps. It's still pretty harsh and contains numerous traps where big hordes of enemies attack you all at once, so playing with saves is reccomended.

I tried implementing different difficulty levels, but at one point realized that making the map easier kinda misses the point, so there is barely any difference between I'm too young to die, and Ultra Violence.

Also the SSG is introduced very late into the map, because all my previous maps had it at the very beggining, so I wanted to make a change for once.

I don't think there are any bugs in the map, but I'm gonna hold on before uploading it to idgames just in case. So yeah, feedback would be greatly appreciated ;)

 

Download: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/s-u/unhappy

 

Screenshots:

XnFxFop.png

ab6zOTP.jpg

9EFEMzY.jpg

eWuGuYi.jpg

Tested on Zandronum 3.0. Briefly checked if works on GZDoom 3.2.4 (and it does).

 

Edit: idgames link added

 

 

Edited by Lorenz0

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Okay, I switched to 3.2.5, I'm not really sure what you meant by hax0r3z tho :P

 

By the way, I'm still waiting for some feedback guys :/

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2 minutes ago, Lorenz0 said:

I'm not really sure what you meant by hax0r3z tho :P

I can help here:

 

Quote

This is yet another point release for GZDoom, which addresses a serious flaw that has appeared since its ACS implementation. 

 

https://zdoom.org/news

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2 hours ago, Lorenz0 said:

Okay, I switched to 3.2.5, I'm not really sure what you meant by hax0r3z tho :P

 

By the way, I'm still waiting for some feedback guys :/

Gave it a play. The first half or so (everything pre MS/BFG room) is alright. I liked the first fight, and the one in the "grid" room. I couldn't enjoy the rest because I was constantly worried about firing a rocket point-blank into block of monsters that could spawn suddenly with no warning during those multi-stage fights. The megasphere/BFG fight is an improvement the previous map because the spawn spots are telegraphed. Still, though, it seems really weird to me that an active part of my strategy is "fire rockets, but not over these face things because monsters spawn there" -- it's like, very metagamey and atypical, not in a good way. In the next room, that archvile introduction is somewhat cheap. In the outdoor area after that, blocks of monsters spawn progressively again, this time later ones are in completely untelegraphed spots, so I actually face-rocketed. After this, I shimmied carefully along a narrow strip of rock around a building, only to meet an impassable line after about 15 seconds, and I quit there rather than shimmy back. 

 

The philosophy towards creating harshness is flawed here. Encounters in the map are "harsh" inasmuch as they troll RL use and sometimes spawn viles in the open when you might be in an far from cover. With foreknowledge they are quite easy. It's better when encounters preserve their difficulty on repeats, but aren't as liable to inflict damage on first plays for the sole reason that you don't know where everything spawns in and when. SSG exclusion felt arbitrary. The map would be better with one, if only so that the RL can be ignored. 

 

Edit: Looked at the end. I'd just make the exit lower when the player has killed all four cybs instead of requiring them to track down every monster. Feels very anticlimatic when it's "oh, this last harmless baron dawdling around on the other side of the room that was keeping me from being able to leave."

 

The gameplay in this map can be orchestrated in vanilla (with a bit of Boom, for sequencing the moving map geometry). Everything that relies on spawning can be done with standard teleport closets, rising floors, lowering barriers, and so on -- all the vanilla methods -- which would look better and be more conductive to good gameplay (less RL trolling). The last lock-in can be done (better) by having the barrier lower on a timer as soon as the player enters the room, calibrating it so that it has finally lowered roughly when the encounter has entered its "harmless clean-up" phase. The script is superfluous gameplay-wise, and harms staging too, because as mentioned it looks wrong to have to track down harmless monsters to leave.

 

I'm not telling you to switch to vanilla or Boom. Rather, to make sure the ZDoom methods aren't just doing what can be done in vanilla/Boom but worse. 

 

Anyway, that all might seem harsh so I'll point out some more pluses: cool layout, liked how you seamlessly revisit the big cavern a couple times, and progression crisscrosses over it; I mostly liked all the fights that don't involve sudden spawning + RL trolling; visuals are solid too.

 


 

Edited by rdwpa

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Well in the areas where use of the RL endangers you, you're kinda forced to use the Plasma/BFG. I feel like in the BFG room use of rockets early on is suitable, or even advised, considering the risk of hitting yourself in the face is pretty low. After a while you should just switch over to BFG.

 

And what are you even talking about, you have to walk on that narrow strip of rock for like 5 meters, and then you're back to stable ground, how did that make you not want to play the map anymore.

 

About the viles in open areas, I always made sure to leave some kind of cover to hide from them, but even if they surprise you, you should have enough hp to survive one hit.

 

The exit lowers after you hit a switch, not after you kill all the enemies lol

 

I agree with you about that I shouldn't use spawn-ins if there is a better method of making a trap, I went kinda overboard with some of these scripts.

 

This level was basically my first attempt at creating something slaughter-ish, but since I'm not skilled enough to actually play through slaughterwads, I didn't have any reference to what makes a good map in that style, so it's kinda trial and error for me. I'm still learning a lot of new stuff about mapping all the time, and trying not to repeat the same mistakes in newer maps.

So anyway thanks for the comment, I appreciate it ;D

 

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Your first point is true, but that's sort of my point. The fact that the RL use endangers the player in a wide-open space for no other reason than  monsters might unpredictably spawn in front of their face is the gameplay mechanic that I don't like. RL vs. clusters and hordes is really fun, but this type of staging takes away the ability to enjoy that, by making one really hesitant to use the RL while an encounter is active. Instead the RL becomes a glorified clean-up weapon, once an encounter has died down and stragglers are left, or against random smaller clusters of mid-tiers encountered throughout the map. In the fight I face-rocketed, I was like, "Yeah, no way this is a multi-stage encounter too," and then 10 seconds later while I'm rocketing a cluster, boom, I'm enveloped in a big group of monsters. That's basically saying, "yeah it's probably optimal to almost never use the RL."

 

The "narrow strip" is this: 

 

Spoiler

5qABqVf.png

 

The impassable line is at the end here.

 

Spoiler

FiGGL03.png

 

There was good reason to explore it because such things sometimes lead to secrets.

 

In the last fight I hit all the switches within half a minute of entering the area, while cybs/barons were infighting, and the exit became accessible much later, after immediately after I killed the last baron, so I'm not sure what happened then.

 

The encounters are composed well, tbh, despite your lack of slaughter experience -- would just work on the staging.

 

Edited by rdwpa

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I've just finished this map and would say it was well worth the effort. As with your previous wad, Castle Struggle, the main satisfaction came from working out strategies to deal with the various slaughterish set pieces, rather than the repeated experience of being overwhelmed and killed several times in most of them (I took your advice and saved quite a few times).

 

I'm not a mapper, and so can't offer anything in the way of technical advice, but didn't experience any bugs or notice anything which was a significant problem. For the record I used GZ Doom 3-2-0 on a Windows 8.1 laptop. The map was good looking - I thought it was going to be a techbase or Icarus style space station from the first two or three rooms, but the later hellish-type stuff was really impressive. 

 

As far as the combat went, I didn't fancy my chances after getting wiped out a few times by the hordes of Revenants and the Archvile which spawned after the first skull switch, so rushed past these, and also through the monsters in the next building (with the soul sphere), and made my way as quickly as possible to the channel of blood leading to the lift and the teleporters (having made sure to clear out the Hell Knights and Mancubus from a safeish distance before pressing the skull switch). I failed about ten times in the BFG room, trying to slug it out with the huge number of adversaries, before realizing that it was better to retreat to the smaller room behind the two doors (which I'd cleared out in advance, of course), then to take out the Revenants and Archvile with the rocket launcher and plasma gun as they attempted to enter the room. This left just the Cyberdemon and sometimes a Pain Elemental to deal with in the main hall. I dealt with the next two confrontations by heading for the higher ground across the lava lake, and taking advantage of the cover in the building there. When the next horde appeared, the strategy was to blow a path through the middle of them with the BFG, and once the Archvile was taken out, it was a case of mopping up. The final showdown was probably the most straightforward: the Cyberdemons were all caught up with infighting, one of them being killed by it, and the rest significantly weakened so that they were easy to finish off. I only realized when all the Revenants on the periphery were dead that the red switches activated crushers which could have removed them at once! Unlike your previous map, ammo was no problem - I finished with 600 plasma cells and didn't use any of the extra supplies on the raised structure in the final room.

 

My final tally was 90% kills, 100% items and 100% secrets. Time taken officially 54 minutes, but quite a bit longer when taking into account deaths and restarts. If I had to make any adverse criticism, it might be that the player engages with the map almost solely as a series of slaughtery episodes. I note that there's only one secret in it: it would be a welcome relief and diversion if, after surviving a hectic encounter against 80 Barons, Revenants and whatever else, one could go exploring for a few hidden areas and items, especially in such a large and impressive-looking map. Also it could do with one or two puzzle-type elements, even if it's just finding the red/yellow/blue keys.

 


 

Edited by Summer Deep

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@rdwpa Fair point, I'm gonna work on my staging.

Ohhh, I honestly had no idea I left something like that in the map, I never planned to have anything hidden on that strip of rock, I should've just blocked it off.

 

@Summer Deep Come on, the soulsphere room isn't that hard, you don't have to rush through it haha. About the BFG room, I kinda let you cheese it, by hiding in that little room afterwards, like you did, but you're not really meant to go there until clearing the BFG trap. You can, but it's not really fun to hide behind the doors for 5 minutes imo. So that's kinda the easier option for those who can't pass the trap the normal way.

And I'll try to make my next maps more diverse, without constant slaughtertraps, so yeah, thanks for the feedback ;)

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On 1/12/2018 at 3:02 PM, Agent6 said:

hax0r3z

i was curious about what this acs flaw was but could not find anything but there was one.  Anyone know?  thanks.

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3 hours ago, Ed_Deth said:

i was curious about what this acs flaw was but could not find anything but there was one.  Anyone know?  thanks.

They usually keep tight-lipped about what exactly it is, so as to not give malicious people specific ideas (which would be ironic!). Malicious scripts can do things ranging from resetting or seriously screwing with your cfg, to even crashing your comp or worse

 

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  On 1/27/2018 at 9:40 PM, Ed_Deth said:

i was curious about what this acs flaw was but could not find anything but there was one.  Anyone know?  thanks.

 

They usually keep tight-lipped about what exactly it is, so as to not give malicious people specific ideas (which would be ironic!). Malicious scripts can do things ranging from resetting or seriously screwing with your cfg, to even crashing your comp or worse. 

 

ok thanks

 

 

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