DOOM PRIME - AMAZON INSPIRED MAP

Ooooooooooooh your map has lit a sparkler in my head and is making my skull itchy with anticipation, man. I'll definitely check it out and report back later. Awesome title art too!

Just downloaded your map to play later. Love your idea, I'm glad you made this map! :)

For a first time map this looks extremely promising.  Very nice screenshots, and very nice trailer too.  You've clearly put the work in, especially given you made it in Slade no less.  It's not a bad editor by any stretch, but for a map with the detail you've sought to put in, it's impressive you didn't use something like Ultimate Doom Builder.  

I cracked the WAD open in Slade to have a quick look out of curiosity, and a couple of immediate observations:

• The map format you've used is GZDoom UDMF.  You should put this in your OP, because it means only GZDoom will run the map.  
• There's a couple of errors in your WAD:
  • You have S_START and S_END the wrong way around (S_END needs to come after S_START), but there's nothing between them anyway, so you can probably delete them
  • More disconcertingly is you have your Incarnate actor (and a few associated actors) defined twice, once in your DECORATE lump and again in your ZSCRIPT lump. They are pretty different actors: one has 300 health, the other has 4000.  This is causing a bunch of console errors you might want to fix.  You only need one or the other, so you should pick the one that's right and delete the other.

Somewhat amusingly I tried loading the map with -nomonsters to have a quick look at the scenery, and the map kept automatically ending within a few seconds.  It looks like you have a constantly running script that checks for the presence of the final enemy and ends the map if it isn't present?  Might want to think about only triggering that once the boss dies.

I'll give the map a proper play-through tomorrow, but my first impressions are genuinely very positive.

Lemme guess...your boss's office is in there somewhere? ;-)

So this was a pretty cool map. I especially enjoyed the room with the massive monoliths filled with skulls, very ominous and intimidating hehe. You managed to kill me a couple of times and kept me on my toes with some of the monster encounters, particularly when hiding a few of 'em behind some walls where you had be me bellowing, "Oh you bastard!" as I ran backwards spraying n' praying with those. A funny highlight: I accidentally managed to get the boss to come out of his arena and locked himself out of it, so I had to fight him in the stairway :P

Good stuff, mate.

I'll give your map a go later, right now I just wanted to say what an amazing piece of art that header image/titlepic is! I'm kind of surprised no one else has commented on it yet. Completely fantastic.

Love this concept, very intriguing looking stuff here!

Wow this looks REALLY impressive for a first map and ONLY using Slade which is even more impressive!

Wow! Thank you so much everyone! I really appreciate your feedback.

I see a few people surprised that I built the map in Slade. I only have a macbook and it seems like it was the only tool available for MacOS, maybe I was wrong? It was definitely tedious sometimes but it was just so cool to be able to make my own Doom map I didn't mind at all. I really felt like a young Romero ha ha. The entire process was just fun. 

Thank you Bauul for all the useful feedback!
 

20 hours ago, Bauul said:

it means only GZDoom will run the map

Ok I did not know that. 

20 hours ago, Bauul said:

You have S_START and S_END the wrong way around

Ha ha ok, tbh I was too scared to touch these files. I'm not sure what they are for. 
 

20 hours ago, Bauul said:

More disconcertingly is you have your Incarnate actor

Yes, I will try to fix that. I wanted to add a custom boss just to learn how to do it. But I was a bit confused with all the files. I was a bit scared to break the map somehow. I saw the errors when the game starts but it seemed to work.
 

20 hours ago, Bauul said:

the map kept automatically ending within a few seconds

You really know your Doom! I wanted the map to end after you kill the boss. I'm not good at scripting at all so I found this simple script that checks if the boss is present on the map. If you know a better way I will fix it. 

--------------------

Other replies. 

20 hours ago, Maes said:

Lemme guess...your boss's office is in there somewhere? ;-)

Now that I know the tool, I'm definitely thinking of making my office space ha ha. 

17 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

I accidentally managed to get the boss to come out of his arena and locked himself out of it, so I had to fight him in the stairway :P

Ha ha I guess that's possible if you wait outside. Thanks for playing the map. 

13 hours ago, plums said:

what an amazing piece of art that header image/titlepic is!

I have passed the word to the artist who drew it. She's very happy right now. 


Thanks to everyone who took the time to download and play the map! It's a really cool feeling! 
I'll try to fix the bugs over the weekend and will update the link. 

 

Hey man, I'm checking out your map. I like the idea you were going for, of a giant, Amazon-style warehouse. I did notice as I was playing that the secret with the light amplification visor (in blue key room) has a missing texture. Specifically, when you open the door, it's both of the textures on the side. 

Also, I found another door texture that moves up and down when you open/close the door. I don't mean to sound like I'm nitpicking, btw, just noticing bugs that are easy to fix.

and another missing texture. Where the blood/skull wall would be in the pillar.

Finally, like others have stated the door to the boss room locks out. First the one with the icon of sin picture before the staircase can close, and you're stuck outside with noclipping, and second the door to the big arena.

Overall, it's a pretty cool map. Very aesthetically pleasing, and fits the theme you're going for. I like that you have Bezos spelled backwards on the floor and as the boss. Well I don't have anything against the man personally, but neat touch for the map. Archvile bit was kind of annoying to slog through, and there were a few moments that I felt I could have used some more health, though it was far from brutal. I did Hurt Me Plenty on my first run through.

For a newbie you've got a really good handle on some pretty complex aspects of getting a map working!  The good news is that there's nothing you need to add to your wad to get it working, just a few things you can tidy up to make it a bit neater.

1 hour ago, jbledivelec@gmai.com said:

22 hours ago, Bauul said:

You have S_START and S_END the wrong way around

Ha ha ok, tbh I was too scared to touch these files. I'm not sure what they are for. 

S_START and S_END are essentially the same as SS_START and SS_END - they're for putting sprites between.  Technically S_START and S_END are for IWADs and SS_START and SS_END are for PWADs, but it doesn't really make a difference in practice.  Given you already have SS_START and SS_END, you can delete S_START and S_END.

1 hour ago, jbledivelec@gmai.com said:

22 hours ago, Bauul said:

More disconcertingly is you have your Incarnate actor

Yes, I will try to fix that. I wanted to add a custom boss just to learn how to do it. But I was a bit confused with all the files. I was a bit scared to break the map somehow. I saw the errors when the game starts but it seemed to work.

So in GZDoom there are two different programming languages you can use to create new enemies (and other Things).  DECORATE is the original, older format.  It was superseded a few years back by ZSCRIPT, which does everything Decorate does plus more.  What you've got is your boss Thing (Incarnate) defined twice: once in Decorate and once in ZScript.  You don't need it in both - one or the other works fine.  IIRC, Decorate files are loaded after ZScript files, so essentially your ZScript is being overwritten by the Decorate version upon launch.  That's why it caused the errors but still worked.  You can probably just straight up delete the ZScript version and it won't break anything.

Talking of redundant files, I also saw you have MAPINFO, ZMAPINFO, RMAPINFO and EMAPINFO.  Given this was will only work in GZDoom, the only Mapinfo you need is the ZMAPINFO.  The others are either for other ports such as the original Hexen (Mapinfo), Doom Retro (Rmapinfo) and Eternity Engine (Emapinfo).  None of which you support, so you don't need them.

1 hour ago, jbledivelec@gmai.com said:

22 hours ago, Bauul said:

the map kept automatically ending within a few seconds

You really know your Doom! I wanted the map to end after you kill the boss. I'm not good at scripting at all so I found this simple script that checks if the boss is present on the map. If you know a better way I will fix it. 

The script you have at the moment looks like this (re-printed here for others reference):

script 1 OPEN {
     while (ThingCount(T_NONE, 66))
          delay(35);
		print(s: "You have defeated the Evil Sozeb");
		
		delay(200);
 
		Exit_Normal(0);
}

Essentially the script runs constantly in the background during the map, triggering every 200 tics to see if the boss is dead.  It's not an invalid approach, but it's a little inefficient in that you don't need to be checking for Boss from the very start of the map.  While your one little script isn't going to cause any issues, it's good practice to be efficient with scripts where possible.

One feature of UDMF is that you can assign scripts directly to Things.  In the case of monsters, the script will trigger when the monster dies.  In the monster properties, give it Action 80, and then pick the script you want to run.  So you can have an Exit script that is assigned to your boss that triggers just once when the boss dies.  Nice and efficient.  It'd look like this:

script 1 (void) 
	{
		delay(35);
		print(s: "You have defeated the Evil Sozeb");
		delay(200);
 		Exit_Normal(0);
	}

Again, it's not strictly necessary for your wad, but decent best-practice to get into.

22 hours ago, QuaketallicA said:

I don't mean to sound like I'm nitpicking, btw, just noticing bugs that are easy to fix.

Thanks a lot! Even if I played this map a hundred times, there are always some small bugs. 
It would be a shame not to fix these after all the time spent making this map. 
 

22 hours ago, Bauul said:

just a few things you can tidy up to make it a bit neater.

Thanks again Bauul ! I've been able to fix the problems you mentioned. I feel much better now that the map loads without errors. 
And indeed your script is much more elegant. I did not know you could assign scripts to Things. Pretty neat! 

I've updated the link to the MAP in the OP for anyone interested. 

Hey!

First of all, this is a great map! I really enjoyed it, especially the visuals.

One remark I want to make about the baphomet door near the end. I know how to open it, but it seems to work only with certain compatibility settings. Haven't figured out yet which ones exactly.