Shotgun Symphony -- Ultimate Doom episode -- Working on v1.1

Capellan said:

Do I need to the new RC or are maps 5-8 the same on HNTR as they were in RC2?

They are the same on HNTR as RC2, but RC8 fixes that lowered floor mistake that can be confusing and change the intended gamerplay, so I recommend using RC8. If you already have a continuous playthrough going on RC2, you can keep going, but I'd still suggest doing a pistol-start on RC8 first.

Edit: If you play M5 in RC2, you'll know which room I'm talking about because you get there through a corridor immediately beyond the red door, where you see 3 Barons on columns through the windows, then take a lift down into a computer room. Immediately to the left of the lift you rode down is a lowered floor in an elevator shaft. The best way to handle this is to hit the switch that raises the floor -- before you hit any other switch in the room -- and jump back out as it rises. Once it's up, the room will play normally.

Also, more one thing. I don't know what difficulty you had in mind when making this episode, but you might want to beef up the later levels with more mons on UV. :)
But I don't think everybody here would agree with me. However, if you are going to make a second episode, then it's ok for a first episode. I most certainly hope this is not your final contribution here. :)

pcorf said:

What a brilliant episode, really beautiful maps Steve. These levels are vast in size and look great and battle well too.

I remember playing the first few maps of this many years ago during the Team Insanity days and they were certainly impressive maps and the use of Brown1 and Startan3 was very nice. But seeing the revamps, my jaw hit the ground.

Wow, thanks, Paul! Given the high esteem in which I hold your maps -- and the number of times I've copied your Marbface slabs with torches beside them, including in this set ;) -- that really means a lot.

Firedust said:

Also, more one thing. I don't know what difficulty you had in mind when making this episode, but you might want to beef up the later levels with more mons on UV. :)
But I don't think everybody here would agree with me. However, if you are going to make a second episode, then it's ok for a first episode. I most certainly hope this is not your final contribution here. :)

The difficulty I had in mind back in '97 was to make the hardest E1 yet seen, and I think I was heading in that direction, since I think it's harder than Dawn of The Dead or Classic Episode. But in the years that followed, the great Double Impact came along, so I reckon I'm more in that realm ATM, and that's fine. I'm thinking of pushing the difficulty up a bit towards the end, especially the end battle in M7, which doesn't satisfy me. This version of SS already has a lot more monsters in that fight than in 2014, but the difficulty is the same. IMO, it doesn't need more demons, it needs more Sergeants teleporting in after the first wave is killed. I also like rdwpa's idea for pumping up the final battle in M8.

I've considered going megawad on this, and already have a couple E4 maps, with a third soon to appear in UDINO. My plan for E4 is "completely batshit crazy," sort of Perfect Hatred all the way through, and maybe even worse. I'll be doing an E4 regardless of whether I go megawad with SS.

For my tougher maps, Realm of Intensified Chaos is much harder than Shotgun Symphony. These are my maps from the 1996 megawad Realm of Chaos, heavily updated and with far, far nastier action. The first 4 of 6 are done.

I have 2 maps coming up in TNT:Revilution and 3 in UDINO. Probably the hardest map I've released to date is Heat Miser in MAYhem 2048. That's the one that got me the rep for Caco storms. It's another map in the Amiga Demo Party style, the first of which was this as yet unreleased map, if you're curious. Edit:Requires cc4-tex.wad; http://www.mediafire.com/file/14s6iin8qfa8eb3/ADP1aae.wad

I'll be around for awhile. I already have enough work on the plate for the next 3 years. ;)

e1m5 on HNTR
The opening is easily the most challenging part of the map on HNTR. Ammo for the shotgun is very tight and you'll have to switch to pistol most likely, while the hitscanners do a pretty good job of whittling away your hit points. I hit 20% health at one stage. A single extra set of shells would probably make it play significantly more relaxed. Up to you if you want that or not, though :)

Progress felt a little unfocused here, with me basically bumbling around until I found the way forward. It doesn't quite feel purposeful enough to be exploration focused, somehow. Possibly part of the problem is that the keys just kinda feel like they suddenly turn up in front of you as you're wondering around, rather than being hard fought trophies.

Maybe I missed a shortcut back, but the trek from the blue key to the blue door felt very long and empty. I strongly recommend some monster re-population in some of the areas the player must traverse to return.

I liked the big mostly silent hall after the yellow door. Nice mood setter, though I guess being RNGed by very distant sergeants might be an annoying thing to have happen while you're in the eastern part. It also felt weird that you couldn't walk out of the windows there: the ledge is low and the gap is plenty tall enough. You may want to consider raising the floors.

The big final battle is fun, though running around to hit all the keys felt a bit like busy work. I guess you're trying to stop something just doing a run for the exit, and forcing them to fight? I'd suggest trying some other mechanism to do that ... maybe put a single switch up in the towers in the centre of the map, so the player has to ride a lift up to hit it? Bonus points if you make the floor of that tower lower and then have the elevator in one of the other towers, so the player has to ride up then jump across the gap :)

e1m6 on HNTR
No ammo starvation on the opening here, but the action is pretty fast paced with all the crossfires. I like it. It's a good example of how to deliver a more moderate difficulty while keeping the gameplay engaging.

Progression felt much more purposeful here than in the last map, at least until the big slime walkways area.

As for that final area, I admire its scope, but it has some issues. The first is the most obvious, but also possibly the most port dependent. I had several graphical glitches like the one below:



The second is that it's another 'run back and forth across the area flicking switches to reveal new switches that'll eventually open the way forward'. It's functional, and certainly better executed overall than on the last map, but goodness me it's a long hike back and forth. This is particularly true for monsters, since they move quite slowly. Given that the exit area around sector 370 is a tactically advantageous position for the player, there were some long periods of me waiting for the demons to slowly fly (or even more slowly run) in my direction so I could clean them up.

I eventually tired of this and did more fighting on the platforms, but then I am not actually an HNTR player. People who actually were might well dash out, trigger monsters, then dash back over and over which would be a bit of a dull way to play but is certainly safest. You should probably look at ways to make going outside more attractive to such players (more radsuits on HNTR maybe so that they aren't quite so constrained in safe movement). Also, give the monsters more ways to get at sector 370.

I dashed past all the exit monsters beyond the sladwall barrier. They didn't seem worth it :)

Part 2 of my replies to rdwpa's commentary and FDAs.

E1M5 –

rdwpa said:

e1m5 was cool. There was a moment where when I was backtracking, a baron accosted me below the lift. I expected something, but that still freaked me out. :D Apart from the big encounter at the end, and the atmospheric lead up (must take a lot of discipline as a mapper to build such a big area and then not stuff an encounter into it -- I think that is good restraint, here), this one seems less, idk, "special" than the rest, or maybe that's what I get for playing two-thirds of an episode over the course of a few hours.

Glad that Baron freaked you out, ;D It's not as much fun if he corners you in there, which has happened to me.

Oddly enough, this has always been my favorite map overall. Part of that has to do with mapping to Suspense. That's the way I prefer to map nowadays, find the music first and make a map around it, rather than map first and desperately search for music that fits. Music search is the most un-fun thing about mapping to me, so better to get it out of the way at the start. Luckily, in this case, the music was supplied by the IWAD, and its perfect pacing wanted me to make a very large map with fairly relaxing gameplay, punctuated by occasional blastfests. This map is built around the secrets, with the BFG secret – formerly a Computer Map – being my pride and joy. Sooner or later someone will find it on their first run. There are plenty of clues and numerous views of the path, starting in M4. On the matter of discipline leading up to the end fight, give credit to Suitepee. He did me the honor of livestreaming the 2014 beta, and back then, that big hall had Barons and Cacos in it, and the room just before the fight had a lot of monsters on those platforms. Suitepee said it felt sloggy, and he was right. Because these maps are so old and I've gotten used to their quirks, I developed "mapper's myopia" over the years and just accepted stuff that was suboptimal. But when I hear someone call it out, I can recognize it if it's really wrong, as was the case here.

Watching your playthrough, I was worried that the end fight needs a little something more. Maybe more ground clutter can be there, or can warp in, Imps and Pinkies perhaps. Waves could be based on triplines or the mandatory switches. There is also Adam's idea of riding lifts up the towers, which I like a lot, and some interesting possibilities from puttimg the switches there. Worth noting is that for players of lesser skill, such as myself, the existing fight is perfectly adequate, but I'm always game for pitching things a little higher up the nasty chain. ;)

The way you got the Blue Armor secret before the final fight isn't supposed to happen. I can fix that by putting the tripline lowering the platforms into the secret path to the teleporter, thus reserving this prize for the continuers and maxers.

E1M6 – I'm glad you didn't completely hate the pump room. That room is much easier if you get the secret Plasma Gun first. Without that, you had to plink at tons of Cacos and Lost Souls with the single shotty. As you probably know, the preferred path is to go for the Soulsphere and fight in the Power Station, where you can get a bunch of rocket boxes and find the secret cell charge packs. That allows for much more aggressive play, though I've seen players go all the way to the first switch without firing a shot, release the ground clutter, and once they shoot, all hell breaks loose when Cacos and Lost Souls flood in from the "lightning rods." I'm also surprised you didn't mention how I left the teleporters unblocked for monsters – in every map, in fact. I found that it made the combat a lot more fun in this room thanks to its unpredictability, and that includes when the player jumps down and teleports back up. Sometimes you telefrag a monster, and sometimes you are immediately attacked from a monster that's close, but not close enough to frag. This is a weird and polarizing room because so many different things can happen depending on player actions. I didn't really test out all the alternatives, but after watching your FDA I think one thing I can do is, instead of concentrating so many rocket boxes in one room, I can scatter more along the aqueducts in order to make the various fights less sloggy.

E1M7 – Most players have agreed with you that this is their favorite map. It was the first one built new from scratch and with the influence of modern mapsets in mind, Double Impact in particular. The secret areas have a lot more action in them than the ones in M5. The Plasma Gun secret was based on a mistake in the blue key room, because I accidentally tagged a floor sector the same as the lifts, which led to various nifty things happening, like putting a bunch of Imps down where they shouldn't have been, and making me think about where to put the switch that opens the secret path. You showed a lot of dedication in locating that secret, which IMO is probably harder to find than the BFG. Congrats! I was also pleased when you ran from that Caco trap and toward the yellow key. I put big windows in the walls there so the Cacos could swarm through if anyone took that option.

One thing that disappoints me in this map is the end fight. Magnus pointed out its weakness in 2014. I added a bunch of monsters to it just before starting this thread, and . . . nothing's changed. It's no easier or harder than before. Infighting canceled out all the new monsters. It's a very easy ring-around-the-rosie fight. The only thing I can imagine will help is teleporting in Sergeants after the first batch of Sergeants on the ground is eliminated, which usually takes just a few seconds. Another option is 1 or more Cybs, but there's already a couple secret Cybs on the map and I'd rather keep the reveal in M8 for those who don't find them. Your thoughts?

e1m7 on HNTR
This feels a bit too easy, to me. The big fight in the northern room (sector 960 etc) is about the only thing to really get any blood pumping. I think you can safely up the monster count a bit in most other areas. There was plenty of ammo even without ever finding the (secret, I assume) plasma gun and this having ~300 cells I couldn't use.

You might also want to remove some of the pillar / cubbyhole critters in HNTR and add back in some of the more 'free to roam' types. For instance around sector 281 have only 3 or 4 pillar-bound imps and add 2-3 imps elsewhere in the map where they can move around. Those types of encounters are more dynamic and interesting.

Similarly, the room with the yellow and red doors would be better if only about half the cubby holes had enemies in on HNTR, and the room itself had more wanderers.

Speaking of the red door, I suggest making it a blue door instead and ditch the red key. Leave the existing blue door-related sections as optional content. You could even delete sector 166 and make the line 953 a D1 that doesn't need a key. Put a tasty morsel in place of the red key.

While I like the big fight in sector 960 when it finally happens, I'm not so keen on the switch-hitting busy work before it. I suggest ditching the switches at lines 5144 and 5159 and rejigging this room so that the player can choose whether to clear the wings before unleashing the flood. You'll need to move the trigger for lowering sector 1043 if you do that, of course.

Speaking of sector 1043, it's another game-breaker in co-op. I suggest adding a cubby hole outside it that opens when tag 60 is triggered, revealing a switch to open it like the one on line 6180.

Finally, it seems a bit weird that the exit has you facing a pillar with a sergeant on it, but he's not there at the start of the next level and a cyberdemon has abruptly appeared. Maybe in e1m8 shift cybie and/or the P1 start so that they're not instantly visible to each other? I know you're going for a heartstarter at the open, but it feels wonky to me. (you could just shift him on HNTR if you're really dedicated to the idea of him being right in your face on HMP/UV).

Just played through the first two maps and really enjoyed that e1/e2 visual feel, although these have a bit more of a 'grand' feel than the iwad maps, particularly in outdoor areas. It's cool that you're making the maps interconnected in a sense, it adds an element of atmosphere when maps do this in my opinion. I'll have to record some demos for this, seems like my cup of tea based on the first two!

Capellan said:

e1m7 on HNTR
Finally, it seems a bit weird that the exit has you facing a pillar with a sergeant on it, but he's not there at the start of the next level and a cyberdemon has abruptly appeared. Maybe in e1m8 shift cybie and/or the P1 start so that they're not instantly visible to each other? I know you're going for a heartstarter at the open, but it feels wonky to me. (you could just shift him on HNTR if you're really dedicated to the idea of him being right in your face on HMP/UV).

Thanks for your comments, Adam. I'll have to dig into the details on M7 a bit later since I'm running on vapors right now. ;D

As to the weirdness about the pillar, it's not weird at all. There should be both a shotgun and a dead former Sergeant on that pillar in M8. There was a living Sergeant there in M7, and you were supposed to kill him for looking at you the wrong way. As to the Cyb, if you remember, this is the same Cyb from M1 -- the one you weren't supposed to kill. You've just done a full loop of this vast complex and come back to where you started, but now the Cyberdemon has escaped his cage and is on the loose. And you know what your job is, Marine. ;D

That, of course, is why he's there waiting to shoot you at the start. I can move him for HNTR, but HMP and UV players have to take their chances. Every now and then he'll get a shot off and kill someone in those first moments, too. I had him even closer -- and the player start out in the water -- until DotW mentioned that Nightmare runners will almost certainly die because the Cyb will be on -fast and players won't have time to react. We'll see if more tweaking is necessary.

Wait, I just checked Nightmare on M8, and that sucker got off about 7 shots. Lucky for me, I dodged in time but splash lowered me to 71%. But Nightmare runners can survive the start, on the second try if not the first.

Anyway, you'll soon be walking through the end of M1 and into the shared area, which is now pocked with corpse-strewn bloody craters from rocket blasts and has bloody, cloven-hoofed Cyberdemon footprints. Soon after that, you should be in a certain amount of trouble, but the way things have been going, I wouldn't be surprised if there's missing items and other small disasters. So much for my belief that this was almost ready. ;D

Your comments on M5 -- actually, this is very much dedicated to exploration. There might be a certain amount of bumbling progress because it's semi non-linear. If non-linearity is defined purely by getting keys in any order, then this is a linear map, but it has optional side quests and very large secret areas that are all telegraphed somehow. You'll see the PG, BFG, a Soulsphere and a Blue Armor from many places long before you can reach them. For exploration fans, I hope this creates a sense of mystery that drives them to find the secret paths. The map is also built on having long sight lines into areas you can't yet reach, and where monsters might well be shooting at you.

I really like your suggestion about riding up the towers at the end. It might be worth it just for the view. I'm thinking it over. As you surmised, the little switch-work is there to keep players from escaping the end fight. Some players will do it anyway, but at least they'll be slowed down a bit. As I was saying to rdwpa, maybe that switch work can seem less tedious if it also results in monsters teleporting in, ground clutter like Imps and Pinkies instead of Cacos and Lost Souls. I was also thinking of adding ground clutter to the main fight. What do you think?

I'm not so keen on repopulating the area between the blue key and the blue door. I'd need to do the same thing for HMP and UV, and there's already 411 monsters on UV. I think that's enough aside from the possibility of adding more to the final fight. A little bit of emptiness here and there gives the player time to breath and recuperate. I'll look into that ammo starvation issue at the start and also beef up the other sections as you suggested. Again, I'm a bit hamstrung by my older ways of setting difficulty, which are less easily tweaked than my current 3-2-1 monster system for UV/HMP/HNTR.

I figured M6 might present some issues, but was hoping software nodebuilding errors would not be among them. Not the most fun thing to fix. Had some in 2014 and the ones you saw -- I counted 3 on a quick sweep -- were the result of last-minute nukage pool additons. I'd added a bunch earlier without any problems and was hoping the latest ones would go as smooth. Oh, well! :D I should've checked in PrBoom, but I'm at that stage I think we all reach when the mere thought of looking at our maps again makes us want to vomit. :D This will be my number one priority for the next RC.

I knew you'd have something to say about the gameplay. As I discussed with rdwpa, my hope was that players would take the Soulsphere bait. That way they get the health bonus plus load up on ammo. You can check my comments above for more details. So, the number two priority will be spreading those rocket boxes out on the aqueducts to minimize tiresome plinking at Cacos. Progression might be harder to fix, depending on whether I want to stay control-freaky or give players the option to exit earlier. I can make that switch at the very far end open the exit as well as all the monster pens, so the player would have the option of fighting their way through or making a run for the border. The switch that currently opens the exit door would vanish although the teleport would remain. It performs 2 functions -- getting you to the exit area quicker, and also provides a path back into the level for those who want to search for missed secrets and such.

I usually run past the mobs at the end, too, though on my last playthrough I maxed it, a pretty rare thing for me. ;D

On the issue of radsuits, one thing I forgot to mention this time is that the nukage isn't fully toxic. The original gag was that it gets stronger the farther it is from the source, meaning that the area around the pumps is perfectly safe. After that, roughly half the nukage is toxic, so if you ran on it, you'd get about half the damage you normally would, so this allows you to explore the side areas with less danger of dying. But I think you're right and it's a better idea to provide well-placed radsuits to encourage exploration.

Well, one more to go!

Edit: The more I think about your idea of eliminating the red key in M7, the more I like it.

Doomkid said:

Just played through the first two maps and really enjoyed that e1/e2 visual feel, although these have a bit more of a 'grand' feel than the iwad maps, particularly in outdoor areas. It's cool that you're making the maps interconnected in a sense, it adds an element of atmosphere when maps do this in my opinion. I'll have to record some demos for this, seems like my cup of tea based on the first two!

Thanks for stopping by, Doomkid! Be advised that software nodebuildinjg errors have been found on M6, only a problem if you run PrBoom or ZDoom. I'll be fixing that soon.

Looking forward to the demos. I hope I give you a good workout. ;)

e1m8 on HNTR
Solid episode ender though I admit it feels a little weird that after building up the cyberdemon as this looming threat, you have to fight more than one of them during the map.

The map is not crippled for co-op, but it is a mite hampered - any player not close behind the first player to reach sector 316 is doomed to a long run across the nukage to reach the baron walkways. I suggest splitting line 1817; leave half as is and make the other half open another teleporter, near the entrance to the room, that goes to sector 388 or 389.

I also note that a single player who wanders over line 1817 is unable to make it back, which means that if he hasn't yet cleared the southern part of the map - as I had not - he'll be doing the map without a chaingun or plasma rifle. The map is still doable as is, so you could easily leave it unchanged, but maybe consider removing a box of bullets in the final arena and adding duplicates of these weapons down in the nukage? Or at least a chaingun, if you don't want to do both.

Other than that, maybe move the teleport lines closer to the first cyberdemon, to make him more likely to trip them before he volleys rockets? It would also make him less likely to 'slip out the back' which he could conceivably do by wandering into sector 63.

Overall this is a fun episode.

Edit to add: pretty proud of myself for finding the backpack secret in this one. :)

@Steve D Uh, I found out that Shotgun Symphony was uploaded to the archives not so long ago. I wonder why you didn't announce it, been hyping for this for so long X)

Hi @Catpho.

Thanks for noticing. Yes, it was uploaded on January 7th, IIRC. ;D

The main thing is I wanted to wait until it appeared on DW in the beta downloads area before I made an official announcement. I figured that would take about 10 days, and in that time, I wanted to record runs of the maps in order to create a gameplay trailer for when the mapset appeared on the DW downloads page. But . . . something seems to be wrong with the software that alerts people to fresh uploads. Everything there is from last November, it seems, and I cannot even find SS through a file search from DW. I've seen that the same is true of Eviternity. So that took the wind out of my sails, and then, as usual, I got really busy IRL, so I haven't even finished the gameplay trailer. :D It's also why I didn't see your message until just now. I've been away so long I had 204 messages today. Yikes! :D

Probably within 2 weeks I'll make an official announcement, with a new thread, I think. But yes, SS is there on idgames.

I'm also sure that work is being done to fix the problems in the downloads area. Best of luck to those on that project.

I could always use more Doom 1 in my life, lovely screenshots!

I noticed that too cuz prefer using old idgames engine, was afraid you have abandoned it and uploaded "as is" for the sake of it, but oh no, it's perfect! Thank you!

At last, Shotgun Symphony is officially released! OP has been updated.

Grats on the release!

Thanks, Chris! I hope it kills you a lot, and I mean that in the nicest way. ;)

I'm gonna let that smartass remark pass! What I won't ignore is the fact that I helped your sorry white ass test this damn thing and I'm not credited as a tester! WTH man!

You'll be hearing from my lawyer soon!

Hmpf.

Uh-oh!!!!

My first thought was, "I remember you testing Abcess, but SS?" Then I checked the Abcess text and you're not listed there, either. Then I asked myself how that happened, and I figured it out. It's because we communicated through email, so you weren't in the threads, which is all I checked. It looks like I might have to fix the text files and upload them again. <Hangs head in shame>

It's okay, Steve. No need to spend too much time and effort on it. I'd rather you just owe me a favor :D

* Little Red-ass Winged Devil on Steve's shoulder *

"Do it, Duff. Tell him to bring back the psychotic uncaring axe-murdering Chris Hansen of old in his next map. Let the world weep. Oh, yeah, uh Ave Satanas and shit."

Seriously, great to see this is finally "officially" out. I look forward to your shock-horror E2 sometime this century. :)

@Chris Hansen Hmmmmm. Uhm, uhm, o-kay. I just hope it doesn't involve whips and midgets. ;D

5 minutes ago, Demon of the Well said:

I look forward to your shock-horror E2 sometime this century. :)

LOL!!!!! Yeah, me too. I'm actually arguing with myself about whether I should let SS be a standalone and do an entirely new E1 for a megawad -- imagine the delays that would cause! :D -- or go straight into that E2. The main issue is wanting to create a tighter theme between the episodes and make smaller maps.

On the Hansen front, I thought his Gore maps were quite nasty. I sacrificed several pelts and got lost in M2 for awhile. They looked fantastic, too. You listening, @Chris Hansen? But yes, they could be even moar brutal, couldn't they? I also know about another little something he was working on that set me back on my heels, though I'm not at liberty to discuss it in public ATM. ;)

Hey neat, I finished up playing Abcess about... 40 minutes ago!

The fun never stops!

Yeah, I'm here guys... hmm, maybe this old dog has a last few tricks up his sleave. I'll sit here on my porch and give a good thought over a pipe of tobacco in my best rocking chair... uhmmm, yes.... yeeesss.

23 minutes ago, Alfonzo said:

Hey neat, I finished up playing Abcess about... 40 minutes ago!

 

The fun never stops!

What hilarious timing! :D 

I'll be bold and assume that if you're willing to continue from Abcess to Shotgun Symphony, you might have been reasonably entertained by the former batch of buffed-up '98 maps. I hope you played the 1.1 version, which fixes the old stuck monsters problem on Map02 and the potential game killer at the end of Map04. I put that version up last October and naturally never mentioned it on DW. Maybe I should get around to that. ;D

I hope you enjoyed that early teleport trap on Map06. It was always there, but I turbocharged it for the new version. 

I owe you a reply to a PM from way back. Expect it this weekend.

Cheers!

32 minutes ago, Chris Hansen said:

Yeah, I'm here guys... hmm, maybe this old dog has a last few tricks up his sleave. I'll sit here on my porch and give a good thought over a pipe of tobacco in my best rocking chair... uhmmm, yes.... yeeesss.

I have a sinking feeling about this . . .

Then again, maybe you're planning a way rad map for a certain project I can't publicly discuss but which currently has 22 candidate maps, albeit none by Chris Hansen. It would be great if that shortfall was rectified. ;)

Now you just have to explain why it took three years to get around to uploading it :)