*2020 HAKAWARDS* I'm Also Looking to Play and Record Your Maps 2 *CLOSED*

Table of Contents

@Snark

Doomworld forum topic

I like the episodic structure so far. The three maps within the episodes are totally cohesive and even visually joined at start and exit, but the episodes themselves are unique and obviously distinct from one another. It’s nice to isolate an aesthetic over three maps, and Snark does a pretty good job, though a few visual upgrades would be pretty easy, I think.  I had fun with this one, especially just traveling through the map. The combat exists more to give you something to do than to kill you, but it never gets to the point of boring grind. There just are moments where you kinda say, “That’s it?”

Bottom line: another fascinating concept brought to life a little too grandly

@purist

Doomworld forum topic

I like it. I can see how it could be frustrating to a player who immediately rushes forward and gets pwned by rockets, homing rockets, and fire, but it's not a one-way drop, and optional content and multiple paths are well established at this point. I did not do that, so it was rather rewarding to realize why I was dropping the eyes, then realize it really wasn't necessary, then realize it definitely was necessary. The only thing I'd nitpick is perhaps the map feels disjointed, but even with all the teleporting, there are some good visual connections.

Bottom line: creepy, well balanced, and intriguing. 

I thank you for your criticism and await both your megawad and your eventual return to this thread.

@HAK3180

Thanks for playing MAP11, it was reassuring that you enjoyed it, more so that you really "got" for I was going for. You even nailed my insecurities over it, largely how well it is communicated that the direct route is an option - but a very rough one. The disjointedness was also part of my concern and this is more prominent for me knowing the design process was a few ideas crudely welded together. I always feel more fondly about maps that come together organically (MAP04, 07, 08, 09), even if they are structurally more basic (hopefully this makes sense to a fellow mapper!)

It is very rewarding for me to hear picking up on aspects of my style (conscious or otherwise) - even though I have tried to make the levels distinct in other ways. I agree this has helped you find more secrets in the more recent maps - the only one you missed I think is accessed by a jump from the western side.

If you don't lower the eyes they can see you in any of the brighter areas of the room so there is a guide if you choose not to lower them but from pistol start you will also be limited to the SSG and you were right that the purpose of the second exit was just for those playing continuously who want to avoid the death exit. The idea for the secret that teleports you into the nukeage is that if you use the rad suit you can save the invul.

One thing I noticed is I could use a bit more light contrast because it is at times oppressively dark.

The next episode is the new one and has not had a lot of feedback. I don't think there are any gamestopping issues but they may be a little rougher around the edges.

All good for your project!

At first I thought I won't even ask because you don't prefer custom monsters, jumping etc game changing. So I'm just fine if you skip this. But as you liked "Lost civilization 1" and saw you are taking a break I think you should try the second part. 

So if you think at going on it:

I'm here with the conclusion to the first episode of Lunar Outpost, Map10.  (TNT/ GZDoom)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nv7basmk8usuk01/LunarOutpost359v10.wad?dl=0

This one will probably take over half an hour for a blind playthrough, but that's just an estimate.

(Edited for the thread to show up)

I've released a new demo with 5 maps of my MegaWad Project. It is perfect for you, because it has a Vanilla vibe.

The topic:

On 1/27/2021 at 10:48 PM, HAK3180 said:

@Clippy

 

Doomworld forum topic

 

The map is pretty boxy and ugly, and I think messing with the geometry would make it feel less contrived because the setup is cool. I like all the conversion points and the fact that you have ultimately like a dozen mini objectives but a pretty small space overall. Because of the freedom of approach, this might make a good candidate for routing for all sorts of niche categories, like speedrunning. Combat was mixed. There were some dull moments, like dealing with four demon reveals and the Mastermind, but it ends up being a good mix of incidental type stuff and more signature fights.

 

Bottom line: layout execution could be more captivating, but the concept makes for an interesting time

My thoughts:

Haven't done mapping for a long time but I've returned to it now (thank you Doom Zero) so here it is. It has about 4 small maps, MAP01-03 and MAP 31 (can only be accessed through idclev and MAP03 is just an ending map). I think this works fine with any source port, I tested it GZDoom, Zandronum, PrBoom+ and Chocolate Doom.

3 hours ago, Clippy said:

I guess if the player wants to abuse this then fill your boots I guess - it's the player who would make it not be fun for themselves

I think it's wise to have this mentality in some regards. Normally I wouldn't cheese a fight like that (see imp fight) but I just wanted to point it out.

3 hours ago, Clippy said:

You keep talking about how going upstairs is better for fighting than going downstairs, can you explain this further?

When you go down stairs, you are temporarily airborne, during which time you have no control over your movement. This is bad for dodging projectiles. And for non freelookers, up is visibly preferable because your gun sprite will often block your view going down.

7 hours ago, HAK3180 said:

I think it's wise to have this mentality in some regards. Normally I wouldn't cheese a fight like that (see imp fight) but I just wanted to point it out.

 

When you go down stairs, you are temporarily airborne, during which time you have no control over your movement. This is bad for dodging projectiles. And for non freelookers, up is visibly preferable because your gun sprite will often block your view going down.

Ah when I think of fighting downstairs the only thing I can remember is e1m9 where there's a lot of monsters constantly coming up at you from downstairs. Of course those stairs aren't as beefy as mine

Anyway thanks for the feedback it took me 5 hours to make this reply because Doom world is slow as heck right now lol 

Catch you later

@Snark

Doomworld forum topic

This map feels a little too long and big to be as linear as it ends up being. The space itself seems more like the setting of a 700-monster slaughter fest, but it’s more of an empty adventure - again, the monster population feels too low. I don’t think traveling through the map itself is quite of the quality that it can be the main event of the map, and there’s not an emphasis on puzzle or anything. So the combat defaults to being in the spotlight. And it’s not bad. In most cases the idea is solid, but there are just not quite enough monsters or too much ammo in most situations.

Bottom line: fun to be had but a little basic

@Kain D.

Doomworld forum topic

This map had a few signature Kain D.-isms, but it was largely straightforward and conventional. I thought too much of the combat promoted or even demanded camping. You often turned a corner or opened a door to reveal monsters awake and waiting to attack. Visually, there’s not much to say other than it’s a bit of a new look for Kain D., but no high praise and no complaints.

Bottom Line: oddly enough, I kinda miss the weirdness

@purist (My mic is just lying on the desk for most of this recording. Fortunately, you can still hear me pretty well, but it does also pick up the PC’s fan. Man, you keep drawing the short straw...)

Doomworld forum topic

The main negative in this one was the number of custom monsters. Plasma marines are introduced, and they seem to be the biggest deviation from any Doom monster, so that was a bit annoying to me. Other than that, I mostly enjoyed this. I liked how the lack of ammo was more to force decisions than cheap difficulty. I liked hunting down secrets and figuring out what was optional and what was necessary. I liked how it was such a small map but kept me going for half an hour.

Bottom line: optional content stays intriguing

@HAK3180

Thanks again for playing.

This level was partly inspired by Deadzone so good spot with the reference. There were three ideas. 1. A base that you can run around the outside of and attack from different angles 2. A level that terrarforms so once you lower the blue key the areas that you access via lifts earlier on (you only got the yellow key this way but the red key can be accessed from the outside too) all lower so that you can then run around the map on the first floor 3. the last leg of the map involves a mass re-population, which is the fast demons warping off the blood falls and the plasma zombies.

The plasma zombies I think inherit the chaingunners health etc as I felt they need to be a little more hardy the former human. They are visually very similar to former humans (the hair is the only clue prior to their attack) because of sprite limitations in vanilla doom. The alternative is to recolour or replace the former human sprite (the recolour is what I did for demons and cacodemons).

There is a way out of that softlock, you can lower the diamond shaped plinth you jump off at the start like a lift (maybe it could be retextured as a clue, it's a small enough space I guessed people would find it but you aren't the first to assume there is no way out). This also gets you back to the start area should you wish to but I don't think there is any real reason except to escape the blood pit. You were close to the light amp secret it is actually more simply accessed that you have come to expect with these secrets so you didn't check the sector itself for triggers. The other one you were looking for is accessed through that tech wall but it is opened by a similar texture nearby - it's easier to find it you go to that area before the level lowers down.

I'm not sure about that cyberdemon. It seems a bit unnecessary and I can't remember what his purpose was except a risk-reward if you want the megasphere. I suppose you could draw him into infighting with the plasma zombies but I'm not convinced the crossfire would be worth it.

Your audio wasn't an issue. I happened to listen from my laptop and I could hear you OK with my earphones in.

According to the feedback I've had on MAP13 it needs more work clueing the player into progression so I will give you a tip in advance that you can choose whether you want to take or not:

If you do read the spoiler I'd still appreciate your thoughts on how well communicated those spots seem as well as any ideas for making it clearer.

On 1/27/2021 at 3:32 AM, HAK3180 said:

ANNOUNCEMENT

 

 

It’s been a good run and a great time, but I’m afraid it’s time for this to come to an end. I will not continue to record videos after the last week of February. To facilitate that process, please submit your requests by noon (UTC-500) on February 15. As much as I would love to continue, as much as I struggled to hit "Submit Reply" just now, I am going to take some time to work on my megawad. Unfortunately, two maps per year is just too slow a pace, and I have to take that time from somewhere, especially as other responsibilities have increased over the last year or so.

 

I do intend to come back to this. I’m not leaving the community, and I’m not saying I need to be completely done with my wad before I take this up again, but for now I’m planning to take at least a year off. Until then, stay mappy, and may your wads always have feedback.

Not gone and not forgotten.

All the best with the future mapping :)

Just wanted to drop by and re-iterate all the praise and thanks and so forth. Your channel currently has 1401 videos, and since most of them seem to average about 30 minutes, I'd guess you've uploaded around 700 hours of footage. Incredible!

Sup HAK. Well, again, another speedmap from me and probably the smallest that i ever made.

Map name: Panic Corridors (Why "panic"? Cuz i have such size limit and only 2 hrs ;-;)

IWAD: Doom 2

Build time: 2 hrs only on mapping.

Port: Prboom plus (Complevel 9)

Speedmapping theme: 1024x1024 map size limit.

Download: panicv3.zip

Hey! In case you're still open and curious and in the mood for some 199X maps revamped in 2020, I would be pleased if you could check out my newly created thread for the purpose of testing my "practically finished" Episode 1 for DOOM 1 (Ultimate, Vanilla):

Thank you so much for your consideration! :)

It’s the end of the month. You know what that means...

Forsooth! PUSS V: Clandestine Castle Crashing hath arrived!

Within ye 22 map megaWAD, thou will’s’tve find (at least) 10 secrets per map! Art thou read to hump thy wall?

I hope thee enjoy playing ye wad, ye knight of playtesting ,o7

On 1/29/2021 at 3:30 PM, Jaska said:

[Lost Civilization 2]

As much as I did like the original and was glad to see you working hard on something new, it looks like it's just not for me, based on the deviations from standard gameplay. Much luck on that though.

Hi, I've been working on my megawad project for coming up to a year now and I'm reaching stages where I'm starting to finish parts of the game off. Would appreciate it if you've still got enough time for recording to have a look at it.

The Slayer Project

Started: 4th March 2020

Most recent update: 1.2.1 - 31st January 2021

Maps: Episode 1 (MAP01 "Base Entrance" - MAP09 "Mixed Reality")

Ports: Any ZDoom-based port should work fine. The most recent builds are confirmed to work on GZDoom and LZDoom. Maps use UDMF so it is not Vanilla/Boom source port compatible.

Notes: This project is basically my take on Doom 1 with a Doom 2 style - the levels themselves are fairly vanilla. There is no additional content outside of some new textures and 2 new enemy types (which only make appearances in the EP2 maps so far). Episode 2 is still a heavy work-in-progress so I'm not asking for feedback on those maps for now. Only 4 of them are done anyway.

:)

@Kyukon

Doomworld forum topic

I like the structure here a lot. There’s an optional key that I don’t even think has to do with secrets. There are a couple different distinct hubs, but the map definitely feels cohesive. I thought there were moments where the combat got a little awkward, often having to do with the large areas I was in, but some of what could have been oversized was countered nicely with flying monsters, damaging floors, and a pretty liberal use of homing rocket wielders. Visually, I seem to remember Kyukon embracing a little more detail, but I didn't think anything was actively bad here.

Bottom line: not my favorite in the wad but it’s a solid map

@elderdragonbrasil

Doomworld forum topic

I like the layouts in these a lot. There’s always optional areas, intriguing secrets, and pretty good interconnection. Enemy encounters are a little basic, but they manage to be fun and not tedious or insulting. I sense that this is early in a mapping career, mostly out of lack of big picture originality, but if this is simply an exercise in adequate mapping, I’d say it’s a success

Bottom line: simple but intricate maps, fun to explore

I'll try to answer some questions;
- The missing monsters were a trap tied to a blood puddle in the upper hub room. (The one the yellow teleporter takes you to.)

- Ammo is relatively tight without use of the berserk on this map, so much so that I had to buff it a bit due to myself and Zellis running out of ammo in the upper hub consistently. Even more so if you don't use any secrets, despite most of them being gimme secrets. (Zellis being one of my friends the original 7 maps were for, he's taken a large liking to classic Doom ever since.)

- You can use the W1 Exit trigger on the far side of the elevator at the top, without waiting for it to lower.  The switch does have an S1 exit trigger as well just as a fail-safe in case you fail to trigger the W1 line, but it seems that's kind of obscure, huh?

I just want to take a minute to thank you one more time for all of the minor details you've given criticism on.  I swear I can hear you say monster symmetry stopping me from doing so most of the time!  Of course, as you've demonstrated in many mapper's wads it's been for good reason since it's just so predictable.  Not to say it doesn't have its time and place, but that all comes with mapping practice.  I'll take it as a win if I can avoid that and doorway combat in any future maps.

Please don't hate me because I sent you this evil, incomplete mapset. ;)

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to playtest the first 5 maps of Realm of Intensified Chaos. Map06 is in the set but is in its original state, as it was first released in Realm of Chaos, all the way back on Halloween, 1996.

You read that right. 1996.

You may be unfamiliar with Realm of Chaos. It was a megawad made by a bunch of noob mappers on the Mac platform -- The Macintosh Team -- in 6 months. It's widely recognized as not the best megawad ever, but it still has a 3.5 lifetime rating on idgames, so it wasn't awful, either. Realm of Intensified Chaos is a drastic revision of the 6 maps I originally submitted to the project. In most cases, all the original architecture is still there, though every map has added areas. Only Map04 has had a large section completely eliminated and replaced with a new arena.

The maps have received a major visual upgrade, but importantly, the Intensified part of the name refers to the substantial increase in raw brutality over the original maps. Map01, which was Map09 in the original megawad, is fairly tough but not extreme by modern standards. Map02 is nastier, whereas Map03 is almost a breather map by comparison. All of these maps are medium-size. There is a major difficulty spike in Map04 and Map05, both of which are also big maps. The nastiest parts are equivalent to my Amiga Demo Party carnage fests.

The mapset has a Nazi theme where the ultimate goal is to track Hitler to his lair in Hell and terminate him with extreme prejudice. 

Below are some pics from Map04. Here's hoping you choose to playtest it.

One more thing: This mapset uses mp3 and tracker music, which will give you silence on Crispy Doom. My advice is to use GZDoom, given that PrBoom can sometimes loop tracker music incorrectly.

@Snark

Doomworld forum topic

Again, I like the structure and progression of this map. It has a fun adventurous feel, which is not always the case in linear maps. Snark avoids the choppiness that often comes with never making progression decisions. That being said, there is some gameplay choppiness with the same, now stale, weapon progression as every other map. You shotgun and chaingun a bit. You super shotgun a bit. You get a rocket launcher and probably fight a decent hoard. Then you get the plasma gun and an unreasonable quantity of cells shortly before a big finale. That formula is fine, but it’s so predictable within a megawad that never deviates from it. Visually, Snark is very good about cohesion. I think the main brick texture is a little too dominant, and some of the larger areas especially could use better lighting, but they could also use being shrunk, since the fights in them are invariably underwhelming. Although there are noticeable issues, it ends up being a fun play.

Bottom line: same basic map in new setting

@BrassKnight

Doomworld forum topic

These first two are solid showings of adequate mapping with strong layouts and without fear of easing you in. There are challengins situations right away, but I don’t like how a lot of that has to do with extreme ammo deprivation. Maybe a lot is in secrets, but people will very quickly lose interest in fighting multiple revenants and hell knights without even a chaingun.

Bottom line: there’s stuff to improve, but a lot of promise of a classic episode

Over the weekend alone I got requests for 56 maps, in addition to the ten or so I already had in the queue. My original February 15 deadline did account for some catchup before hanging it up, but I don't know that I'll be able to get everything in if anything close to this rate continues.

So please get your requests in by 11:59 p.m. Sunday, 7 February 2021 (UTC-500). Any subsequent multi-map sets will be treated as one request per map, with requests for maps 2-X being submitted at the time of my completion of maps 1-(X-1). This is pretty much my normal practice anyway, but I will enforce it more strictly, so that I get to as many mappers as possible and finish by February 26.

@purist

Doomworld forum topic

I sometimes differentiate between maps I like and maps I think are “objectively” good. This one strikes me as falling in the latter category with its unique character, expert layout, and effective combat. I also happen to like it quite a bit. There are multiple paths much of the way and intriguing secrets to find.

Bottom line: might be a bit polarizing, but strong identity and adept execution