Kuadrat - A vanilla map for the Ultimate Doom

Kuadrat is a small E4M1 replacement for The Ultimate Doom.
 

Info:

It's a vanilla WAD tested in Chocolate Doom and (G)ZDoom

It features a single map wich replaces E4M1

It has skill levels.

The map was made with pistol-start in mind.

Screenshots:

Credits:

rdwpa and Aquila Chrysaetos for playtesting.

Download

Kuadrat.zip

(For the ones that don't like mediafire)

Thanks for playing!

Oh, I found a good reason to distract from the non-stop mapping... In general, a short and neat map in the style of the 3rd episode, which conveys its atmosphere well. The difficulty is low, not counting the traps with demons (one of them bite me from back). When a berserk pack gets into the hands of a player, he no longer loses anything. The only thing that disappointed me was 59% of those killed at the completion of a passage. As it turned out, I missed almost half of the map, having forgotten to take the rocket launcher. Well, it was a reason to run through the map again, but it would be worthwhile to encourage the player to investigate the map entirely, or at least in some way mark exit switch. The most memorable moment is a room with a red key. When I picked it up ... nothing happened xD. I have not seen such gameplay decisions for a long time! Exciting!

 First Demo Attempt - PrBoom

Nice E4 feel. Have a Chocolate FDA: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1prudsvnjfovtmh/bob_kuadrat.lmp?dl=1 (warning: it takes me a little bit to figure out that I don't have the use key bound correctly -_- )

A couple of comments:

-- This had a scrappy E4 feel without actually being too hard. Had to rush past some enemies and manage them while hunting for health and ammo, which made for tense and fun play. Some of this challenge may have come from my boneheaded use key binding issue, admittedly.

-- Really like those compact wood rooms where you have to fall from one into the next. There's probably more you could do with that idea if you wanted to expand this map or make a multi-map set.

-- As one gets further into the map, it becomes darker and more confusing to navigate. I like that on paper, but hunting for the red door at the end (admittedly after backtracking a fair amount) was kind of annoying.

-- Also would encourage marking that exit switch so the player gets to choose whether they want to explore more.

-- Looks like you've got some bleeding midtex's on the window railings. You can fix this by changing the light level of a sector on one side or the other of the midtex so that the two sectors bordered by the midtex don't have the same light value.

This was nice and enjoyable little map. Nice vanilla design and music fits really well. Gameplay feel bitt easy and i think you should put some ssg and barrons or revenanant. I also feel that lighting should be bit darker. But otherwise this was short and fun map and i enjoy the vanilla design.

Actually trimmed the first attempt out because it ended abruptly and I only saw about half the map, so yeah on the exit signs probably

OK updated the wad by fixing the bleeding midtexs and adding the exit sign (i forgot that that one even existed due to me being used to the Heretic texture set)

A minor thing, but would you be able to upload the wad directly to the forums? Seems Mediafire is bugging people with adblockers on now and I've had seedy stuff happen on there before even with the adblocker in place.

I wouldn't classify my paragraph of Discord feedback -- based on a first play that stumbled into the exit in 1.5 minutes with 16% kills and then a five-minute follow-up playthrough -- as 'playtesting'. I don't know a lot about the map beyond superficialities. 

I'll try to squeeze in another look at some point, so that I can be adequately thorough.   

EDIT: 

- The combat is fine for what it sets out to be: nothing too inventive, but gets the job done. I thought the room with the three lifts was a bit of a problem area, wrt map flow. Since you are spending a lot of time waiting on lifts in a short span, the action is somewhat stilted. Also note that if I simply drop off from the green armor area, as is intuitive, and hear the floor lowering afterwards, I have to ride back up to grab the secret -- that is five total lift trips in about a minute or so. I think the most indispensable lift ride is the drop after picking up the chaingun, since it does build a bit of tension while you wonder what you heard being released. The rest can be designed differently: stairs, quickly rising floors that can be lowered, etc. 

- The map geometry is largely the same throughout: indoor rooms with mostly right angles. The way you handle those rooms is usually fine, but I'd suggest experimenting with different types of areas: indoor areas with other angles, outdoor areas, cave areas, ledges overlooking stuff, and so on. (I'd recommend 50 Monsters and Jimmy's latest UDoom set Deathless, if you want to see some great examples of how to handle vanilla + small maps.) The visiplane limit of course has to be contended with in vanilla, but outdoor areas can be made to look good by focusing on broadscale texturing and architecture, rather than smaller wall details. A bit of variety goes a long way. In this map, one or two areas being different in some way would help a lot.  

- When I see a relatively unambitious map, I assume that is the intent, but in case you are still looking to add more stuff that might be cool, it might be worth playing around with a bit of 'scenery' type design -- looks into inaccessible, purely decorative areas in spots where you won't run out of visiplanes. (If that fits your vision, of course.) The map as it currently stands doesn't have much of a sense of place -- it's a building with no hint of anything outside. There is also still room to do more ambitious/memorable things with combat, for example in the red key area, which is a serviceable but not climactic ending.  

Have a casual playthrough. (I left with a pet pinky. :P) 

2 hours ago, Obsidian said:

A minor thing, but would you be upload the wad directly to the forums? Seems Mediafire is bugging people with adblockers on now and I've had seedy stuff happen on there before even with the adblocker in place.

Well that sounds bad.I will upload the map here on DW then...do you know of any better alternatives to mediafire?

For me i would try mega.nz which is my favourite cloud storage. Dropbox can be good choice too but stay away from Google drive, they can delete your personall stuff because of copyrights(own experience).