Let The Maps Speak For Themselves

Well... I'm back. But this time I won't talk. I'm only gonna post.  

Update 04.06.2020: The maps are now compiled in a single wad file. I'm just going to tell you which numbers are ready. http://www.mediafire.com/file/hwgmnei0bop9vv1/Chaseprog.rar/file

1 hour ago, spd7693 said:

The only thing I have a problem with - This cross is a peephole. However, I can shoot into it and the monsters can shoot me while inside it. Ideas how I can fix that? 

What map editor are you using? In GZDoom Builder you can set those linedefs to block projectiles and hitscan. That should do what you want, yea?

What compatibility?

I see a notable improvement in quality from your first creation. Keep it up.

if you don't want anything going through that peep hole, just set the line defs to block everything

Played map 15. By the third room I found the difficulty to be totally unreasonable. I used god mode to walk through the map to see the progression. I'm expected to face down cacos, hell knights and chaingunners with just a shotgun then I have to stumble around in a dark room with over 9000 reventants to find an SSG. And the plasma rifle, with out which the map is basically unplayable, is a secret that no one would ever see. The only reason I did see it is because I used light amp to see what the room layout was.

So yeah, probably a harsh criticism, but the map is way too unforgiving. Architecture is decent enough though.  

Many thanks for the feedback given up to this point. First I'm gonna address the problem. 

20 hours ago, kknot5889 said:

 

What map editor are you using? In GZDoom Builder you can set those linedefs to block projectiles and hitscan. That should do what you want, yea?

20 hours ago, GarrettChan said:

What compatibility?

I use mainly Doom Builder and also use Slade subtly, but still can't really edit textures with it. I need some time to learn it and execute it. Compatibility aims to be Vanilla, but for now I have nothing to test with other than GLBoom+. But no GZDoom stuff. So I wonder how to do this in Vanilla. I tried putting another linedef and raising one of the sectors slightly so the monsters can hear me, but not shoot. But it turned out the peep hole never opened even despite the fact I had all switches, tags and actions correct. This trap is supposed to open up when you press the switch in the living quarters that will open the monk cells where the red key is. It's a very squishy moment of fixing textures and architecture. 

Now I'm gonna address the map: 

17 hours ago, Doomkid said:

I see a notable improvement in quality from your first creation. Keep it up.

I'm trying to. Yonatan Donner and Haggay Niv turned out perfect teachers. No wonder so many maps these days get inspiration from Hell Revealed. For the rest, I think my flawless eyesight has its downsides, because even at 80 lumen the map still isn't dark for me with gamma correction of 2. Thus you see basically four values of lighting. At least they variate and I try to use realistic lighting. 

4 hours ago, Super Mighty G said:

By the third room I found the difficulty to be totally unreasonable. I used god mode to walk through the map to see the progression. I'm expected to face down cacos, hell knights and chaingunners with just a shotgun then I have to stumble around in a dark room with over 9000 reventants to find an SSG.

1. Who told you you have to be methodical? Try again, this time skimming past the church, cacos corridor and dark room with revenants, fast grab the SSG and fight the revenants from the circular room. I even managed to kill the first arch-vile without the plasma gun. (Hell Revealed vastly improved my technique about fighting arch-viles.) 
2. The map is numbered 15 and on 9 you already have SSG, RL, PlG and chaingun. Definitely you would have all that from the previous maps, loaded with ammo, perhaps even some health saved from a soulsphere, some armour and of course, backpack. Who said the level had to be easy to complete from pistol start. 
3. The level was intended to be huge and difficult. This is one of the reasons map 16 is even very easy for @rdwpa's standards. (Referring to a comment and a video he posted in my previous thread, I apologize for addressing him this directly.) 
4. The only harsh places are the revenant trap for the yellow key and the ending. Manageable, but maybe I had to take more ammo into consideration. Then again, I don't feel like adding it because like I said the map is intended to be in a progression. 

5. Quote

   And the plasma rifle, with out which the map is basically unplayable, is a secret that no one would ever see.

   There is a pool of blood in front of it. Look carefully. Who randomly puts pools of blood in the corner? They might mark secrets at times. 

Therefore, I see the difficulty completely reasonable. This is only the first of the maps that will aim for a difficulty curve above iD Doom, maybe even above Memento Mori. (Still undecided. I ultimately am thinking of difficulty somewhere between MM2 and Hell Revealed from map 15-18 onwards.) Still I would like to wait until more people play it and give feedback.  

This is a pretty fun, lite-slaughter map with a classic 90's feel to it. The monsters shape the rooms that you're fighting for most of the map. Health and ammo is manageable. Barrels were surprisingly used to great effect along with the partial invisibility pickup. I played through it with -no monsters and God-UV before tackling it with saves on ultra violence. Finally, playing it all in one go with all kills and secrets. Demo included.

There's a "Think fast or die!" and "If I mess up getting this secret, this map is going to suck" situations. Placing another plasma rifle would be helpful, because the one plasma rifle the player finds is in a secret. This plasma rifle is essential in making this map fun. There's this screwed up part after the blue key where the plasma rifle is needed. I had to use a meta-door open closing tactic, which I'm not a fan of.

I recorded the demo with PRBoom+ with a gamma of 1. You'll see me stumbling in the dark searching for health sometimes. Kind of a hard map, but the fights are easy to remember. Great job.

spd15-demo.rar

I remember you posted here over a year ago. That "rocket launcher behind the fridge" secret in "map 1 - At Home" is one my favorite secrets in custom doom wads.

Edit: Forgot to mention. The yellow key doesn't exist in HNTR.

14 minutes ago, spd7693 said:

• This is one of the reasons map 16 is even very easy for @rdwpa's standards. (Referring to a comment and a video he posted in my previous thread, I apologize for addressing him this directly.) 

For context, the sole reason I bothered to comment as such was the previous thread's proclamation of that map's high difficulty. 

On 12/1/2019 at 1:46 AM, Swalzi said:

The yellow key doesn't exist in HNTR.

Immediately fixing this as well as the stuck 'rachno in the outdoor area. 

6 hours ago, spd7693 said:

 

1. Who told you you have to be methodical? Try again, this time skimming past the church, cacos corridor and dark room with revenants, fast grab the SSG and fight the revenants from the circular room. I even managed to kill the first arch-vile without the plasma gun. (Hell Revealed vastly improved my technique about fighting arch-viles.) 
2. The map is numbered 15 and on 9 you already have SSG, RL, PlG and chaingun. Definitely you would have all that from the previous maps, loaded with ammo, perhaps even some health saved from a soulsphere, some armour and of course, backpack. Who said the level had to be easy to complete from pistol start. 
3. The level was intended to be huge and difficult. This is one of the reasons map 16 is even very easy for @rdwpa's standards. (Referring to a comment and a video he posted in my previous thread, I apologize for addressing him this directly.) 
4. The only harsh places are the revenant trap for the yellow key and the ending. Manageable, but maybe I had to take more ammo into consideration. Then again, I don't feel like adding it because like I said the map is intended to be in a progression. 

5. There is a pool of blood in front of it. Look carefully. Who randomly puts pools of blood in the corner? They might mark secrets at times. 

 

1. I am always methodical when playing. That isn't the point though. No one playing for the time would know the SSG is there in the dark unless they had knowledge before hand which means it boils down to trial and error. 

2. Continuous play was never specified. Maps are generally balanced for pistol start so there was no way to know this.

3. And in my opinion the difficulty is too skewed towards unpleasant for pistol start purposes.

4. Then you should have said that.

5. Yes I saw the blood but only because I used light amp to see the room. No one is going to notice it in a dark room with that many monsters running around unless they max out the gamma.

If you think it's fine then disregard my feedback. I still say it's too difficult when not considering continuous play.

More description in the OP would be helpful. Spd7693 clearly put effort in the map, but there's no mention of:

1) Map difficulty - I didn't go in thinking this would be a lite-slaughter map. Ultra-violence difficulty is based on foreknowledge of upcoming battles and weapon locations. An example, the only rocket Launcher on UV is incredibly hard to find due to the god filter and horde of monsters.

2) Adjusted difficulty settings - HNTR doesn't have slaughter elements compared to the other difficulties. I would of played that difficulty, but the yellow key didn't exist in the version I played.

That's not the answer of my question, but it seems it doesn't work unless you're using GZDoom, so it's a no for me.

Well... It's no secret the map is obviously a part of a 32-map project. So far I've posted five here that are still open for discussion. Well, six actually, but I ditched one, at least 90% of it. And my biggest problem is that probably I talk too much. (Sometimes really talk too much.) As mentioned earlier I thrived for the difficulty of a map and it turned out stupid easy. 

Thus I let the maps speak for themselves. Thus the title. After reconsideration I'm aiming for average 1994-esque difficulty on HNTR - thus no slaughter stuff - while on UV the difficulty is rising and now I'm not sure where it fits. I'm planning to make some maps that can at least scratch Hell Revealed's final third difficulty curve. Yes, folks, my thoughts about difficulty in Doom changed a lot for 18 months. As for HMP, the difficulty is somewhere inbetween. Maybe I'm making the maps too easy on HTNR since the last thing I played on this difficulty was the original Doom in 2001. If I have to make a smaller gap between the easy and hard difficulty, please tell me. 

(Singing:) Oh, God, I said too much... I said enough... 

Another edit to map 15. Now the plasma rifle is in the room with the revenants and chaingunners, where you also find the SSG, at the cost of the megaarmor taking place inside the secret where the plasma gun was. The cell ammo, which also used to be in the secret, now is in the hexagonal room. This will make the map a bit easier to complete, at least from a pistol start. Also, this allows you to go faster through certain traps. 

Oh boy... I wanted to wait, but I can't miss to repost map 16. Why? Because a missing switch made the map unfinishable. 

Well, it's ready. I lost it, had to do it back from scratch, but it's ready. Balancing health and ammo was difficult, but it was true on the final test, where I ran out of rockets too early, I played sloppily at the beginning and wasted too much ammo then. Also, on a previous test an arch-vile single-handedly killed a cyberdemon. Nothing to say more, here is the map. Let it speak for itself. 

Map 32 - The Black Sheep. 

Screenshots: 

Map trivia: 

How long does it take to make a bad map, that made you quit a forum in frustration a map that's a little bit more barable and understandable? Well, rather make it something else than just "a map of corridors". Yeah, I kept the start, the ending and the outdoor box maze, deleted all the rest and... This happened after only 24 hours. This answers the question. 24 hours. 

Map 6 Boot Camp

Boot Camp originally was the name for the 5th map, but I eventually decided it suits this map much better and that's how I placed the name here and renamed map 5 Control Center. It uses music from Starcraft, more specifically the first of the Terran tracks. It's titled Terran 1, but I believe its actual name is Don't Fear The Raptor. (Since it's based on Don't Fear The Reaper by Blue Öyster Cult. But that's a secret of Blizzard Entertainment only. Hey, can't I use music from other games? Hell Revealed uses music from Rise Of The Triad.) 

Screenshot: 

I'm not thinking of doing something else with this map. Whatever I do, I simply see no way of making it better. I'm gonna post it now and simply move on to the next one. Probably it's gonna be another unholy or hellish level, because I seem to have more fun creating them. 

And I need to do something about this 50MB attachments box! Seemingly it's too small for what I'm doing. 

@HAK3180 showed off in his playthrough some bugs which make map 5 unfinishable. I had fixed them, but had forgotten to save them in the separate map file. Now the map file is also fixed, so I'm reuploading the map. It could still be ugly, it could still be dull but at least it's finishable.

Map 30 - Crime And Punishment finished. 

Finally this map is done! DONE! Or so I think. For some weird reason it crashes Chocolate Doom. Too many things maybe? It's no different from the others in terms of how the engine works and of course, all the others run even in Chocolate Doom even if the music doesn't. I may find out a way to fix that before the full length megawad arises. I think it is that there are too many things though, because before adding all the roaming monsters stuff Choco still ran it. 

No wonder. There are almost 1700 monsters. Of all kinds except former humans. Everywhere. Especially demons, revenants, arch-viles and arachnotrons. Watch your step, flip the switches with care and... just have fun of course. For the monster count I have supported you with tons of ammo and health, including 9 megaspheres! Good luck finding them though. And maybe battling your way to them. 

The map goes this way: 

• You have a blue switch for two sets of blue bars, two yellow doors behind them and two red doors seperately. 
• Behind the east yellow door look for a gargoyle switch (1). It's unlocked by two switches in the nearby rooms. 
• Behind the west yellow door is a lion switch (2). It's unlocked by a switch in the same building where you find the yellow key. 
• Between the red doors you find some bars. Once you open them up look for a satyr (3) switch behind them. 
• 1 opens up the bars that block your way into the big marble brick building. 
• 3 opens up a switch on the balcony of the aforementioned building
• 2 raises the stairs in the same building so that you can reach the switch. 
• The switch on the balcony that you get to after flipping 1, 2 and 3 raises the stairs of the final platform. 
• On that platform you find three baphomet pads. The one on the west (left) lowers the small marble brick "building" to reveal the Icon Of Sin. (Named The Master in the story of this wad.) 
• The floor below the platform lowers into an unescapable lava unless you get lucky on an arch-vile jump. It's not hard to perform, but also not really recommended unless in utter need of health. There also are two switches - one to the left of where you reveal The Master and one on the right of him. Both lower two of the towers that have arch-viles teleported on them already. 
• The right (east) of the lowered towers teleports you into one of the top cages. Make sure you've killed the barons there or they'll simply slash you into mincemeat. You see a soulsphere, a blue armor and a switch. Flip the switch. It raises a twin staircase to the baphomet pad in the middle. The teleporter takes you back to the lava. The bars are impassable. 
• The left (west) of the lowered towers teleports you on the right (east) baphomet pad. Fight your way through, climb the stairs and shoot into The Master's brain. 

Note - be careful that the brain is somewhat difficult to hit. You may need to spam rockets and pray no arachnotrons, revenants and pain elementals are around. Two hits are enough, but you must be more accurate than Luke when he destroyed the first Death Star. The shaft I placed it in is just enough wide for a rocket to fit in. 

And of course, behold the mighty Master! 

I wonder why the maps no longer get a feedback. Has anybody even played them? 

My guess would be because things only stay on page 1 of wads & mods for about an hour these days. The forum is in desperate need of two separate sections, one for wad releases and one for works in progress.
 

As it is now, some threads get 0 replies because they’re on the first page for such a minuscule amount of time... I try to throw in a courtesy reply to some of them just to give them 5 more minutes to catch more attention, but it’s just not sustainable as-is.

7 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

My guess would be because things only stay on page 1 of wads & mods for about an hour these days. The forum is in desperate need of two separate sections, one for wad releases and one for works in progress.
 

 

I agree with that...

My two cents - if it’s a large episode or megawad you’re going for, individually downloading each level is annoying - better to release as a compiled set, or at least the individual levels all in one zip file

These maps seem interesting as someone who is in a similar position as you were when you first started.

I really want to play your stuff but I can't really tell what the current versions of the maps are.

And it would help if it were compiled into one wad.

They are actually going to be compiled into one wad, but since I'm not making the maps in order, I was thinking if they should be open for a discussion seperately. I need them also viewed one by one to see my flaws, my pros, my cons, etc. and to see what you like and what you don't like. Also to see aspects where I have to still improve. Of course, I am taking advice and am trying to put effort after following it. 

Another idea would be to have one wad for the finished maps and one for the maps in progress on my computer and to update the wad with the finished maps once every new one is done or once I change something. Of course, I will tell them number by number, because as I said I'm not doing them in order. Right now I have 1, 5, 6, 9, 15, 16, 30 and 32 ready and 29 is in progress at the moment. Of course, still it's not known if all maps will make the final cut and if there will be a new map 5 for instance. So is this idea better? To upload the bulk wad and just update it every time a new map is done? I think that's gonna be less of a hassle for me as well, because I won't need to import textures over and over again. 

Sounds good to me.

OP updated and all the maps are into one file now. Again, these are the finished ones - 1, 5, 6, 9, 15, 16, 32, 30. Of course, the aim is 32 maps and still I'm open for them to be commented one by one. I'll update every time a new map is up. 

Forgot to mention: There are a few quirks because of things I got fed up with. The "hole in the ceiling" secrets are activated the usual way, but now you can also lower them from the outside, which makes them better accessible. Also in map 15 I made the mouth of the yellow door a bit bigger and now the first elevator can't be accessed by the monsters in the church. I'm going to focus on making new maps for the time being and may edit the old ones later on. 

Also forgot to mention: All maps except 30 run in Chocolate Doom. 30 still runs in Crispy though. If you want the music however, you'll need Boom.