Bourgeois Megawad, 30 Maps targeting Unity Port - NOW ON IDGAMES!

Finished the set off this evening, I was only intending on playing up to map 20 but I was really enjoying myself so I kept going - the short levels definitely helped my decision!

I think I prefered the first episode in terms of aesthetics - though it was nice to see the custom textures get some more prominence with the variety of marble colours. That being said, I definitely enjoyed playing through episode 3 the most, with Map26 being my favourite in the set (though Map15 was a close second). I think the harder difficulty of these later levels fits better with the mapping style and monster placement, the issue I had with cyberdemons feeling tacked on in the first 10 maps didn't apply to any of these levels - they felt much more dangerous here.

I think the difficulty of the set could have been a bit harder overall on UV - I didn't die that much and I'm definitely an average-level player. The difficulty curve was very good though, the set definitely got tougher by the end - I feel you could have started with Map1 being more similar in difficulty to Map10 and progressed it from there, though there's nothing wrong with a set of maps being balanced a bit on the easier side.

Some Small Things I thought I'd mention:

- I think an issue with the set as a whole is that the vast majority of the maps fall into the same category of "fast-paced arenas with loads of height variation where you get weapons in order and normally have to kill a boss monster at the end with the plasma gun or BFG" and I wish that some of the maps had different weapon and monster placement to that - obviously its RC3 so I'm not saying to completely redo the levels for my sake, but if you were to ever make another wad in this style it'd be nice to see. It didn't bother me that much though, I still loved playing through this.

- I'm not sure how you're meant to kill everything in Map22 (I probably would have tried to plasmagun the cyberdemon turrets down if I was playing with saves but I didn't fancy replaying the level when I died.)

- I was quite confused when I first started playing Map30 - after hearing the Icon activate I started trying to find a way to kill it before realising that I just needed to hit a switch. I'm not sure how you could make it more obvious though.

- I wish there were some more maps explicitly in the city style like Map20 because that map looks fantastic.

- The brick texture on the bottom part of a curved staircase on Map16 (I go down it at ~30 seconds into the demo I made) looks a bit weird to me. I also felt that 'untitled' didn't really fit the map that well - seemed a bit hell-y for the natural-techbase setting of the map.

Overall, I really enjoyed this set. It's honestly a bit of a shame that the singleplayer part of the set might get overlooked because of the set being made primarily as a deathmatch set (I've never played doom deathmatch so I can't comment on how they'd play) because this really scratched an itch I had - it reminded me a lot of SCYTHE in the feel of the set now that I think about it.

If you want any specific feedback on any particular map (either now, or if you decide to update one of them a lot), then I can replay those levels and give more explicit comments on them.

Here are the demos, again recorded in Crispy Doom: BDM_M11-30_finnks.zip (NOTE: My mum rang me about 3 minutes into my attempt of Map26, I hoped that the demo would pause and skip the 30 minutes I was on the phone for. It didn't. I've included it still, but you might want to watch it in a port which can fast forward demos!)

Thank you so much for the detailed feedback, especially about the difficulty level - I've also found the balance could be a little less generous on UV in specific spots throughout the wad. Overall this is extremely helpful, really glad you hear you enjoyed the set. I'll be checking out the playthroughs soon here too, seeing demos is really enlightening!

This chaingunner in MAP10 is stuck in place. Playing in single player, Crispy Doom 5.10

Screenshot

Good catch, thanks!

Hey peoples, got a new build here and ready!

(old link removed)

I also decided to make a little promotional video for YT:

I really hope we can get this considered for the official Unity addons - I so badly want the console players to have some dedicated deathmatching turf to use that sweet 4 player splitscreen feature.. If people enjoy it enough, there just might be a chance!

EDIT: Just because they're lots of fun, I also wanted to share the screenshots from the ZDS that Krawa hosted a few weeks ago. People seemed to have a blast (literally and figuratively) here:

gg

FYI, MAP06 has a drawsegs overflow at the top-right from the starting area.

Did not know this project had monsters in it. Only when I saw the vid on YouTube and read "playthrough" in the title did I check it out.

Impressive work making the single player experience challenging and engaging.

3 hours ago, maxmanium said:

FYI, MAP06 has a drawsegs overflow at the top-right from the starting area.

Yeah, unfortunately we’d have to strip away too much soul of the map to get rid of those - were basically content with “doesn’t crash in Vanilla”, just because the limits are so stringent.. I appreciate the report though, this is still the exact kind of stuff I want to be informed of!

35 minutes ago, NoXion said:

Did not know this project had monsters in it. Only when I saw the vid on YouTube and read "playthrough" in the title did I check it out.

Impressive work making the single player experience challenging and engaging.

Thank you NoXion! Really, Decay deserves the vast majority of the credit here. I was just going to plop some cursory monsters on but he went beyond and turned an already fun DM set into a full blown SP experience as well! I’m holding out hope that the versatility will make it all the more appealing to be selected as an official add on.

Also, @Doomkid, did you create that "see_easy" palette used here? If so, how did you make it? I'd like to have something similar with custom color palettes.

The program used was either TED or ENDOOMER - can’t recall right now.. but the see_easy version actually comes straight from DBZ Doom and also has a colormap that makes invulnerability a nice yellow-green as opposed to the blinding inverted white. BPRD used a very similar colormap in Nuts, with some luck the tool he used will be in the text file (I’ve only ever edited PLAYPAL lumps, colormaps are beyond what I know!)

9 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

The program used was either TED or ENDOOMER - can’t recall right now.. but the see_easy version actually comes straight from DBZ Doom and also has a colormap that makes invulnerability a nice yellow-green as opposed to the blinding inverted white. BPRD used a very similar colormap in Nuts, with some luck the tool he used will be in the text file (I’ve only e we edited PLAYPAL lumps, colormaps are beyond what I know!)

It's Inkworks. Thanks!

No problem! (Jesus, I must be losing it, ENDOOMER doesn’t even do anything palette related..)

Just started on the latest version. Super fun so far. Really love this idea and these levels are so cathartic in SP.

Really happy to hear you’re enjoying it so far!

Played this with @Decay and @Doomkid today, It was awesome! I really loved the music and the detail, the levels were nice and big! So there was room to run around and demolish unsuspecting players with rockets. One of the best DM WADs I've played!

Would recommend this to anyone.

Thanks, glad to hear you enjoyed it, that big DM was a lot of fun

6 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Thanks, glad to hear you enjoyed it, that big DM was a lot of fun

It really was, this WAD deserves an award, It could serve as great inspiration.

I've played through the entire WAD and a number of levels twice on one of my co-op Zandronum servers. We had 2-4 people playing. Everyone liked it.

The maps are a complete blast; exhilaratingly paced, challenging but fair, bite-sized, and easily navigated. The minor weapons changes are very well balanced, improving chaingun and shotgun rate of fire, increasing plasma gun and rocket projectile speed, making BFG use 80 cells.

I can't wait to see some UV-Max runs of these maps.

Me either! I think a run could be a lot of fun to watch. Really glad to hear you and the others enjoyed them, DOEL.

I could speedrun them, I'm not an expert, but I can do some runs if you want

Sure, I'd be very interested in seeing that

Here it is, the map01 uv-max

Uv was really though for me, but for you guys (and because I like the pain) I did it

Bourgeois Deathmatch Map01: DARKEN UV-MAX in 2:24 by :[LOL 6]: (that's my dsda name)

Demo: brg01m224.zip

Enjoy! I'll practice Map02 and maybe I'll upload a demo on sunday (cuz I'm kinda busy)

Really nice run there! Based on your playing I couldn't tell you were struggling that much, your gameplay seemed really competent. No rush on future demos, I'll definitely really enjoy watching them though.

Decay is doing some pure speed runs (not 100% runs) just to demonstrate potential routes, since he designed most of these after all. I'd love to see him get beaten in a race:

Here's me playing the first ~13 maps on UV. My mic was fucked for the first to maps but it gets fixed fairly quickly.

These maps are really interesting to play in SP. They play very differently to regular maps and the extra wide passages change the feel hugely. I had nothing but compliments with the gameplay and visuals. I did find a couple of misaligned textures but nothing major at all.

Great release - short maps are the best maps. I wanna try these out in DM (BDM event when?). I'll play through the rest this weekend.

^{p.s berserk fists are the fucking best ever}
 

Nice to see that the singleplayer/coop part seems to be finally getting the attention it deserves. 

Let us also help with that by inviting you to Thursday Night Survival today. Starts at 19:00 GMT/14:00 EST and you can expect it to be fairly active for 4+ hours.

Didn't see anyone mention this yet: the demos inside the wad are still for RC2 so they're all desynced now.

Edit: Also, in MAP01 the coop spawns and voodoo dolls are switched. It's ok in the rest of the maps.

1 hour ago, Keyboard_Doomer said:

Nice to see that the singleplayer/coop part seems to be finally getting the attention it deserves. 

Let us also help with that by inviting you to Thursday Night Survival today. Starts at 19:00 GMT/14:00 EST and you can expect it to be fairly active for 4+ hours.

 

Didn't see anyone mention this yet: the demos inside the wad are still for RC2 so they're all desynced now.

 

Edit: Also, in MAP01 the coop spawns and voodoo dolls are switched. It's ok in the rest of the maps.

Thanks so much for running this on TNS! I’ll be joining in for sure. Really glad you caught the voodoo doll mixup, and I’ll be sure to get those demos recorded freshly for the final build. Cheers, KD!

2 hours ago, xvertigox said:

Here's me playing the first ~13 maps on UV. My mic was fucked for the first to maps but it gets fixed fairly quickly.

 

These maps are really interesting to play in SP. They play very differently to regular maps and the extra wide passages change the feel hugely. I had nothing but compliments with the gameplay and visuals. I did find a couple of misaligned textures but nothing major at all.

 

Great release - short maps are the best maps. I wanna try these out in DM (BDM event when?). I'll play through the rest this weekend.

 

^{p.s berserk fists are the fucking best ever}
 

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Gameplay like this is super helpful to us, thank you Vert! Really glad you enjoy beating stuff to a pulp with those fists, hehe.

I would really enjoy playing deathmatch in this set. It looks cool and old school, which I like.

Here's the rest of the maps for posterity.

It would make a lot of sense to include this as a Unity wad. (*cough* @sponge *cough*) The SP is unique and a blast while at the same time the DM maps are very well balanced. It would be fantastic to have access to a good set of DM maps for MP in Unity, killing my mate in MAP01 and MAP07 get boring after a while.

Got a solidsegs overflow crash on Chocolate Doom on MAP15. It's also littered with drawseg overflows which make it kinda hard to see. This is all in singleplayer tho.

It happens when you stand under the window with the exit switch in the main area, next to the small waterfall, and face south.

49 minutes ago, xvertigox said:

It would make a lot of sense to include this as a Unity wad. (*cough* @sponge *cough*) The SP is unique and a blast while at the same time the DM maps are very well balanced. It would be fantastic to have access to a good set of DM maps for MP in Unity, killing my mate in MAP01 and MAP07 get boring after a while.

Thanks so much Vert, really glad you liked it and helped us find yet more stuff to fix/improve on!

28 minutes ago, maxmanium said:

Got a solidsegs overflow crash on Chocolate Doom on MAP15. It's also littered with drawseg overflows which make it kinda hard to see. This is all in singleplayer tho.

 

It happens when you stand under the window with the exit switch in the main area, next to the small waterfall, and face south.

Great catch, thank you! Will have this fixed before release.