[Updated to 2.0 - now on /idgames!] Remnant - a large limit-removing map for Doom 2

Glad you enjoyed it! Great commentary as well, some very good points are raised.

50 minutes ago, Turin Turambar said:

The first Cyberdemon fight was a surprise, as up to that point the map was more 'chill'. It was perfectly doable still, but it is clearly a more 'advanced' encounter where you have to move fast, clear the lane, prioritize targets while also avoid the CD rockets. Maybe put a pair more of small 10hp medkits in the outer path of the circle arena so the difficulty spike is lessened.

I'll look into that, it'd certainly help ease you into it. Especially on UV that introduces some additional hitscanners.

53 minutes ago, Turin Turambar said:

On the other hand I thought the maze area just before the final arena was too easy, with blue armor and health, plentiful ammo and enemy that can't flank you. Here I would teleport a few knights or a dozen of imps behind the player at some distance in a pair of fights, so he has to be aware of attacks in two opposite sides if he isn't careful.

Good points, the maze is a bit more straightforward blazing so I might look into making some variation there. It's difficult with the space, but your suggestions are a good place to start.

Played on UV. Aesthetically, this is a map that doesn't rely on OTex to do the lifting. It would look good with any set. The architecture (both of building structures and rocky terrain) is great; texturing, lighting, and scene composition is strong; all it's all supported by good detailing here and there. The conceptual and narrative ideas are also wonderful.

Gameplay, I found to be a slog (on UV). You certainly have some good ideas and good fights. Favorites were:

But the map has a habit of turning every other moment into some sort of ambush. This is very pronounced once we get outdoors. Many of those fights, at least to me, felt rote and fillery, existing out of obligation, often not playing nice with the spaces they are made in. The most egregious, to me, were:

- RL pickup. You spawn in a bunch of spectres, but if the player just walks two feet over to the nearby 3D bridge, those are rendered useless. (This wasn't boring -- just rocket the spectres and it's over -- but more than any other, it delivered the impression of combat not being developed in tune with the map, at least in the spaces that aren't tailor-made arenas.) 

- PR pickup. The outdoor area, very vertical and 'bitty', is carpet-bombed with monsters. Not many collaborate. Half of these just exist to block your path to the next area. You can sit in the water forever and only the caco cluster will get to you, perched monsters out of sight, harmless. This felt like it was there only because 'PR pickup? there has to be a big fight now'-type logic. The spectacle of it is fine, but the implementation left much to be desired.

- The circular maze leading to the cyb fight. This is 2-3 minutes or however long full of hallway clearing, with seemingly random monsters in each chamber. (The chaingunner horde in particular was when I wondered if there was any reasoning behind the placements. Only the archvile late seemed 'purposeful'.) 

I listed just three but there are more that could be there. For most of those, it was more of a pacing issue than a content issue. 

Also, the BFG now requires a click for each shot? I disliked that a good deal -- it's mechanically unpleasant, so I ended up not liking the BFG-spam ending.

 Thanks @rdwpa for a lot of indepth analysis! Especially since the favorites you listed were ones that I focused on the most, it makes me feel happy to know I succeeded in making them fun.

1 hour ago, rdwpa said:

But the map has a habit of turning every other moment into some sort of ambush.

This I can understand. It was often difficult (with the large open space and being able to see a third of the map in one glance) to keep the monsters where they should be long enough and have them attack when I want them to. This probably turned a bit too often into a regular ambush.

1 hour ago, rdwpa said:

RL pickup.

This is added late into development, mainly for pacing reasons (for better or worse), and is not perhaps the most thought out. Wanting to prevent monster corpses jumping up and down on the 3D bridges made it so that I had to block them, and I just kinda felt like I didn't want to trap the player down in the water, even though it might've made more of an interesting fight.

1 hour ago, rdwpa said:

PR pickup.

This was something I wanted to be kind of the first 'bigger' fight, but due to the height variations and relatively small space to walk around, the 'efficient' way is to drop down into the water just to take down the Cacos while the other monsters fight with themselves. I think part of the design in this map was to not prevent cheesing too much, and let the player give challenges to themselves and try to survive a fight without looking for objectively the most optimal way out.

Maybe it could've been a bit smaller of a fight, with more deliberately placed enemies that don't exist there just to block you, but the way it turned out was what I was looking for, kind of an onslaught of monster catching you off guard (or at least supposed to). The logic was more like "I want a bigger fight, but not something that get's drawn out by the player running for cover and blasting enemies with the chaingun and SSG." So the PR came later, as a means to that end.

But your criticism is heard and understood!

1 hour ago, rdwpa said:

The circular maze leading to the cyb fight.

This was brought up before as well, and is something I should definitely look into to make more.. less random. I kinda wanted it to be more straightforward blazing, and the lack of space does it make it a bit more difficult to make varied combat, but that is of course no excuse to try. The horde of Chaingunners was just for the fun of mowing them down, maybe that's an old trope that's been there too long, but I personally like it. Even if it's not challenging.

1 hour ago, rdwpa said:

Also, the BFG now requires a click for each shot?

This was actually not intended, and somehow I thought it was regular BFG behaviour. I apparently completely missed the ReFire state of the original BFG (I often don't use it in the game anyway). I'll fix this ASAP.

The map has been updated with some minor bug fixes and improvements! Changelog and to-do list are in the OP.

I completed this on UV with 98% kills, 94% items, and 40% secrets, in just over an hour. I didn’t really spend any time hunting for secrets, and only found a few that really jumped out at me (or that I genuinely stumbled across by accident). I will eventually play through this again sometime, at which point I’ll probably slow down and look for more.

Aesthetics

For me, what this map excelled at the most – which added so much to every other element – was how it felt like an incredibly cohesive, self-contained effort. Everything was working together to combine and create a single, purposeful experience. The entire scope of the textures, architecture, and layout worked so perfectly to convey a sense that this was a fortress, independent of the demons, or the gameplay, and that I was traversing/exploring a very believable space. This, I think, was a result of just how awesome Ukiro’s textures are, combined with your brilliant and creative use of them. The custom explosive barrel sprite, though a seemingly incidental change, helped sell that feeling tremendously; it fit the theme of the map, and just helped tie everything together with all of the other custom props in a way that never allowed my immersion to break. All of the custom sounds fit seamlessly, as well, adding to the maps distinct personality – all of which were beautifully underscored by the fantastic music track by Teemu "Forchion" Mastovaara, which set just the right mood. You really couldn’t have asked for a more fitting song, and one that I actually enjoyed hearing on repeat! Everything, from the visual to the audio, just felt like it belonged, and you were able to establish and capture this unique world that I wished I could’ve continued exploring.

Gameplay

This map might not be everyone’s cup of tea, especially on UV. It can be pretty vicious at times, willing to throw a delicious cocktail of 1 part Pain Elemental, 2 parts Arch-Vile, 3 parts Chaingunner, and 4 parts Revenant, at the player in a very tight space with minimal cover... but I loved it! I died more times than I care to admit over the course of the journey, but the majority of the traps, ambushes and arena-style fights felt fairly rewarding. Something I appreciated tremendously was that, if you gave me a new weapon, you gave me enough ammo to really play with it. I spent most of the map at less than 30 HP, but that had more to do with my general lack of skill than anything – that is to say, I thought you were very fair with health and ammo, while leaving room for tension.

For the most part, I thought you did a rather commendable job of creating a strong variety in the different types of encounters. There were a lot of distinct and memorable moments, including:

I also enjoyed the bulk of the large ambushes, though I feel inclined to say that there were a few too many of them (there’s one I’ll mention specifically in my nitpicks). Gameplay/combat always seems like a terribly difficult thing to nail down, but the overall ebb and flow of this one felt really tested, satisfying, and tense, if maybe just a little too predictable and grindy at times.

Other comments

So, as far as critique goes, I can only really nitpick – there’s genuinely nothing “wrong” with this map, at all. It looks, plays, and feels fantastic. That said, I’ll mention the following:

This was an incredibly fun and satisfying hour to spend in a Doom map, both from a gameplay and a visual perspective. I can’t recommend this highly enough, and hope that more people give it a playthrough – it’s absolutely worth it. I'm really excited to see what you make in the future! 

Thanks a bunch for your review @RonnieJamesDiner, glad you enjoyed the scenery and felt the challenge was fun! You raised very good points, and I'm really getting a good idea about what personal goals I should put into my future projects to improve myself.

I'll respond to your critique below:

5 minutes ago, Aurelius said:

I had that effect on some source ports too, it is awfully quiet on some. I'll probably leave it as it is, just to surprise players a bit more.

If there's a silver lining to that sound effect, that is definitely it! It certainly created an element of unexpected panic, which isn't such a bad thing :D

12 minutes ago, Aurelius said:

Actually I mutilated and rebuilt him into the final Boss. But yeah, a Cardinal (the black floating Cybie) could be a possibility too, might put one somewhere, like one of the blue sigil fights! Fun fact: the Cardinal is actually and SS Nazi, meaning he has no splash damage immunity.

I didn't realize the SM had been repurposed for the final boss, nor the Nazi for the Cardinal, that's awesome! But yeah, it'll probably take some experimentation/testing to see what works best in the map. Replacing one of the large ambushes with a Cardinal fight could certainly spice things up a bit, and just add a little variety. It may also serve as a very impactful/memorable and fun way of actually introducing the enemy.

12 minutes ago, Aurelius said:

This I fixed in the newest version!

Oops! I had downloaded the map when you first posted. Playing the latest version is probably a good idea :S

Hello Aurelius, we met in Crispy Doom thread) Your screenshots and description got me, and I've got a suggestion from the very start: your Doomguy appears to be bad at dual-wielding pistols. I saw a deadlier single pistol in Strain. Tweaking the state durations I buffed the killing power a bit and made the animations smoother, attached the dehacked.

Now the pistols fire not monotonously but in 'dodoom-dodoom' double shots, this was to achieve similarity of both hands' animations and, as a side effect, is more lifelike (as you have to aim after each pair of shots) and matches Brutal Doom dual pistols.

EDIT: I encountered an INTERCEPTS overflow when recording a demo. Gonna talk to Chocolate developers about INTERCEPTS limit making Crispy limit-removing fork useless.

INTERCEPTSoverflow.zip

Here's my playthrough of the wad. I go into a bit more detail in the video but general thoughts:
- Visually stunning. Not much that can really be improved on here. Love the architecture from the large scale grandiose elements to the fine details. Stuff like the bloody stones tainting the water and the directional pillar shadows gives me warm fuzzies.

- Nicely interwoven layout. I never felt too lost (I get lost very easily).

- The custom mobs feel a bit like an afterthought. I don't think they really add anything to the map that couldn't be done better with the regular bestiary or a better new enemy.

- Pacing was generally pretty good but the fights do get a bit samey at times. There seems to be a leaning towards "monster soup" rather than tailoring an encounter to specific monster's strengths. The 4 sigils fight was probably my favourite. Each switch had it's own flavour and the arena was a good size. Couldn't escape to safety too easily but there was room to move.

- Ammo/health balance was pretty good although I found the start harder than any part in that regard. Not necessarily a bad thing, just an observation.

All in all a fun map. The issues with the gameplay didn't noticeably detract from my enjoyment. Looking forward to the next one :D
 

2 hours ago, Zodomaniac said:

...I've got a suggestion from the very start: your Doomguy appears to be bad at dual-wielding pistols. I saw a deadlier single pistol in Strain. Tweaking the state durations I buffed the killing power a bit and made the animations smoother, attached the dehacked.

Now the pistols fire not monotonously but in 'dodoom-dodoom' double shots, this was to achieve similarity of both hands' animations and, as a side effect, is more lifelike (as you have to aim after each pair of shots) and matches Brutal Doom dual pistols.

I actually intended the pistols to be just slightly more powerful than the original pistol, wanting it still to have a large contrast with the chaingun. I feel that the current form is deadly enough, as it is not intended to be used in the place of chaingun expect when shooting minor mobs from far away (since the pistol is also 100% accurate, it has that sniping capability).

I intentionally avoided the 'dodoom-dodoom' effect, since that was how I originally planned it, but just happened to find the monotonous firing better (it's a matter of taste I suppose). The downside is that the animation gets wonky at the end since in DeHacked I can't start the Fire state with a different sprite after ReFire as I could with DECORATE, but I decided it was a minor loss. 

Thank you for the input though, will probably look into that in the future if I decide to use dual pistols again.

2 hours ago, Zodomaniac said:

I encountered an INTERCEPTS overflow when recording a demo. Gonna talk to Chocolate developers about INTERCEPTS limit making Crispy limit-removing fork useless.

That is interesting, I didn't encounter this myself. I did read up on some of your discussion about the INTERCEPTS limit with Fabian and it is an interesting limit to have in a limit-removing port, though I'll leave the technical decisions to people well versed with the subject (which I am not).

I got your point, the pistol is not 100% accurate though, it may just be easier to aim as the chaingun sprite is rounded.

Here's that playthrough I meant to post days ago!

19 minutes ago, Zodomaniac said:

I got your point, the pistol is not 100% accurate though, it may just be easier to aim as the chaingun sprite is rounded.

It's not? There is no ReFire state in there, and shouldn't every FirePistol be centered? I might be wrong though, but at least that's how I experienced it when I tested it, that the ReFire caused the bullet spread when you fire continously.

PS. Thanks @Bridgeburner56  and @Doomkid for the playthroughs, I'll watch them once I get home!

28 minutes ago, Aurelius said:

There is no ReFire state in there, and shouldn't every FirePistol be centered?

Seems like some pseudo-randomness is applied after centering for bullets and buckshot.

@Aurelius of buffing the pistols: did you test the map with -fast parameter?

@Zodomaniac Originally I didn't, but gave it a quick try. Is there something funky going on there? I didn't notice anything unusual.

7 minutes ago, Aurelius said:

@Zodomaniac Originally I didn't, but gave it a quick try. Is there something funky going on there? I didn't notice anything unusual.

The chance of surviving the first fight with -fast is really small. It can just be me being a lamer though.

2 minutes ago, Zodomaniac said:

The chance of surviving the first fight with -fast is really small. It can just be me being a lamer though.

Well I got out of the cage and emptied the room, didn't die on my first go at least. Maybe it's because I know where everyone is, but yeah, didn't test it with -fast! It's hectic enough with regular speed, I suppose.

18 minutes ago, Zodomaniac said:

The chance of surviving the first fight with -fast is really small. It can just be me being a lamer though.

It's not typical for -fast to be tested as all, as it's a niche parameter. But the first fights can be done reliably by escaping. (Plays back with v1.2.)

remnant_fast.zip

@Bridgeburner56 That was some quality play and analysis, appreciate your kind words and criticisms. Here's a few reactions from me with timestamps:

In general I've quite well understood my shortcomings when it comes to monster placement, and I'll definitely pay more attention to that in the future. This kind of feedback from the community keeps me getting better and I hope to put out something even better next time!

Glad to see you feel I'd be up for Age of Hell, I have some nifty ideas in my head already that I will probably start testing to see if they work as well as I fantasize them to.

^{Google Translate warning...}

It was a really wonderful experience, especially considering that I took a long break from Doom and generally from shooter games. I handled in about a little over an hour with not-the-most-exemplary-gameplay, because I used cheats: "resurrect", many, many, many times. :P Because of that, I can’t say almost anything about the health balance, but I don’t complain about ammo. By the way, I can’t recall any complaints about the new weapons. It fit my style of play well, turned out to be good balanced and didn't ruin gameplay. And it was purely aesthetically pleasing to wield something new (I rarely play with mods).

I can’t judge the accuracy of my judgments, but somehow this map reminded me of the famous (I hope) "Harvester's Reminiscense" from DWMP 2016 created by Antares031. Mainly due to the rich elaboration of the rocks and the gothic atmosphere. Well ... and the power of the "wow-effect".

I liked how you motivate a player to explore map, while maintaining the freedom to choose the path. And how cool and atmospheric it was to wander around this temple complex! The music track perfectly immerses you in the desired mood, and all these details make you think up the background story of this place. I really appreciate the work with lighting contrasts, because this gives the map an extraordinary depth. Transferring from gloomy halls to rocky massifs flooded with sunlight, I always noticed some interesting things, and the architecture never once fell into self-repetition. Opening new locations I'm always expect something exciting and I have never been disappointed. This is a brilliant example demonstrating the visual power of OTEX.

The layout is very intuitive, despite the scale, and I never lost my way. Gameplay is remembered by Serious Sam style arena battles and fierce traps, sometimes even too much. The latter concerns narrow spaces or halls in which arch-viles are very dangerous, for example, a fight in a room with a red key. In general, arch-viles are amazingly effective on entire map. This is not a minus, I just did lose my skills ... On the other hand, the fight with two cyberdemon was very intense and gave a charge of "positive stress" when your actions begin to overtake your mind ... heh :3 And, yes - a flood of cacodemons ... my favorite attraction! I'll need to make something similar at least once ...

The final battle somewhat disappointed, because promised to be an exhausting, but I was able to entertain myself maneuvering among the projectiles and watch how giant horde is devours itself. The ride ended with the arrival of flying cyberdemons, whose rockets catches me everywhere. Only at the very end, I noticed that they can infight with each other, but I did loose time to use that discovery. The hall where boss fights takes place turned out to be least enjoyable, perhaps because I understood its mechanics too late and went through several stupid deaths. It seems, if player not knowing in advance what is happen there, it is almost impossible to survive.

I still have not tried Eviternity myself, but I see that the idea with copious vegetation was taken from there? In any case, the idea is great. I liked the new graphics, here everything works for aesthetics. The only truly upsetting moment is the dramatic fall of frame rate, especially closer to the finale. This appears only if you look in a certain direction, but during the battle it was make me nervous.

In general, that map left a lot of positive emotions and a bunch of vivid screenshots. Now I'll have new quality benchmark when I try to do something standalone with OTEX. I am sure that in your next work you will raise quality bar even higher. Good luck with that!

  First Demo Attempt - ZDoom 2.8.1 (1 hour, needs first version of the map)
^{^ hope it's not desync due to lags and can be useful.}

@StormCatcher.77 Wow, I can't say how much that means to me coming from the genius who gave us Hatehammer. I took a while picking apart things there, and if I ever make a Boom map, you're my source for trickery!

I wanted the guns to be a bit different, but still feel like Doom guns. A bit faster variations of otherwise slower original variants felt it gave a bit more pace to the level.

I'm happy that the detail gave you the experience of exploration, it was an important part of the design and I'm glad to hear it worked as intended. Transitioning from outdoors to indoors and being able to see parts of the level you had been in, and feeling like you're in an actual place and exploring different nooks and crannies of it were all important design goals for me, and most likely will be in the future (especially considering this reception!). I'll have to check that Antares031 map, you got me curious..

Eviternity was probably mildly an inspiration for lush vegetation (thinking back to the winter forest, I loved that), but honestly it was just me trying to make it look good. I had this sort of visual intuition, trying to figure out how to put everything in place to look just right. So I maybe went a bit overboard with the trees, but glad it still looks the part!

I'll definitely pay the utmost attention to monster encounters, even though I'm happy you found many memorable ones as well. I think @Bridgeburner56 was right to also say that the custom monster may not have been needed. They were definitely me just practicing doing vanilla DeHacked monsters, and hopefully next time I'll bring something more memorable with better introductions!

2 hours ago, StormCatcher.77 said:

Now I'll have new quality benchmark when I try to do something standalone with OTEX.

Aww man, you gotta go for Eviternity with that one. It's still the go-to OTEX creation. But thank you for saying that!

Thank you so much @RonnieJamesDiner and @StormCatcher.77 for your comments about the music! I'm very happy I managed to capture the essence of @Aurelius's beautiful map! It was such a fun trip for me to go back to composing with Anvil Studio and Guitar Pro, something I last did when I was a teenager :D

One of the best maps I've seen in recent memory. A masterpiece throughout.

On 9/27/2019 at 9:59 AM, Horus said:

Is there a glossary anywhere? I see ‘limit-removing’ a lot on this forum but have no idea what it means

 In regard to the Doom engine, limit removing refers to increasing or removing static limits inherent in the original executables and the Doom source code, which can be considered bugs by players or WAD designers. WAD designers sometimes describe their levels as requiring a limit removing engine.

On 9/30/2019 at 1:09 PM, Aurelius said:

I did read up on some of your discussion about the INTERCEPTS limit with Fabian and it is an interesting limit to have in a limit-removing port, though I'll leave the technical decisions to people well versed with the subject (which I am not).

Here I posted my solution to INTERCEPTS problem that can be solved in singleplayer even in Chocolate-based port that Crispy is.

Hard at work for update 2.0, with both minor and significant changes incoming!

So far I've added some more vanilla conveyor action (using Lost Souls as momentum preserving delay), with a revamped plasma rifle encounter. Also made some general tweaks to gameplay, with additional plans to modify some of the fights further in. Also looking into modifications for a possible /idgames submission.

Here's a simple, yet moody taste:

If you've yet to play Remnant, or would like to give it another go, wait until version 2.0 for an enhanced experience!

Finally finished working on version 2.0!

A big thanks to all the people who helped me get these changes done. If I start listing them out I'll just miss someone's name. Couldn't have done all of this without you guys. 

Hopefully you'll find this newer version an improvement over it's predecessor. Mostly the map is the same, but some key things have been changed to hopefully address some of the gameplay issues raised. It will most likely still include some of that grind, as it's inherent in the overall design, but I hope the new stuff brings enough variety to counter this. I will most likely not return to edit this map again, unless there is something glaringly game breaking. A submission to /idgames is ongoing, will add the link to the original post once it gets through.

Version 2.0 changelog below, and also updated the OP:

• submission to /idgames enroute
• more vanilla conveyor action! (featuring trapped Lost Souls)
• standardized Boom conveyors so that they behave identically in different source ports
• fixed an issue with ZDoom 2.8.1 where both vanilla and Boom conveyor activated at the same time
• added an arena transformation
• added two new fights, one entirely from scratch that revolves around the Plasma rifle pickup and another heavily modified from multiple previous encounters en route to the red key
• modified some existing fights to make them (hopefully) more interesting, and also removed some enemies here and there to decrease the grinding nature of some of the fights
• added a tactical cyberdemon(!)
• boss fight monster spawns have been edited slightly to bring more challenge into the battle
• multiple visual and technical tweaks here and there (putting the map over 66k sidedefs and almost breaking it down on Crispy)
• modified the Plasma rifle sprites to look more similar to the standard one, albeit desatured and darker color
• modified the Dual pistol frames (based on a modification by Zodomaniac, thanks a bunch!), making it feel much more natural
• changed the lift sound to a Heretic variant
• modified the super secret sigil locations slightly, and made them also somewhat easier to find (but not too much!)

Just a bug report, this one surfacing near the end of the map, in the circular pathway stretch. After doing all the requisite switch-pressing for getting into the dual-cyb fight, I went back to the first leg of this stretch. The first barrier (tag 67) has now descended, and apparently the banister of the original stairs (tag 181) has too, enabling me to go where I almost certainly shouldn't be and 'bump into' monsters hidden in the ground for the big fight (or fall into their pit if a caco is nudged free). This possibility probably always existed, but it's the first time I went back there at that time. Overall, v2 is no worse than v1.2, for sure, though. 

Thanks for the bug report @rdwpa! 

It actually didn't exist in the original release, since for some reason I had removed a barrier that was originally there that *I never even intended to remove* and have no memory of it. Reintroduced it there and fixed another bug in the close vicinity that wasn't causing issues, but was unintended.