Verdant Hollow - a single map wad

So i beat your map, On HMP.

when i was fighting a archvile, he decided to glitch me into a wall with his knockback attack lol:

Aside from this funny bug, i didn't find anything else!

Now for the review:

I love the atmosphere/environment! the use of green and brown and varying lighting makes it look really good and interesting, Combat is tough and ammo is plentiful, Pacing is nice and the expanding map gimmick is well implemented.

I'd give this map a solid 9/10, Full of potential and I'd love to see what else you are going to create in the future!

Looks neat! I’m a sucker for one-color maps.

Gotta say, played this map and I'm loving the atmosphere, progression and the Vania music. Very atmospheric! Really enjoyed this one!

....

so is this a vanilla map, a gzdoom map? You didn't specify.

pretty good mate, played on UV and took me about 35 minutes

Only issues I had with it were the first couple seconds of the midi having some painful ringing sound, and the room with the first cyberdemon and this revenant ended up getting stuck in an infinite loop of trying to hit each other, the revenant was even able to climb the stairs around the back, but still not actually hit it. Also, the very last room felt strangely easy compared to the rest of the WAD, I'd suggest putting in a baron to block the player's route or something, anything to not allow them to just run straight past and ignore it completely as I did.

Played on Zandronum on UV. Great fun overall.

The end of the map seemed a little weird. When you drop down to the final area, you have a largeish area off to the left of the castle-like entrance that has nothing there. Despite there being a Cyberdemon on the structure, it does feel slightly anti-climactic when compared to some of the fights earlier in the map, especially as you have the BFG by then and there's a decent amount of ammo for it in the second half of the map. The area is also quite vast, with not much to fill it up. I'd almost be tempted to have a couple more Radiation Suits and have a larger battle out on the acid floor before you reach the other side. Admittedly you do have a decent Imp + AV fight, but you've already fought a huge wave of Imps earlier in the map. Even though the AVs were after that fight, it did feel a bit "deja vu" like. I wonder whether at the end it should be something like an army of (slightly fewer) Hell Knights or something. It's a fantastic layout for a great slaughtermap with like 1500 monsters, though I know that's not what you're aiming for.

But as I said, overall it was was fantastic to play through.

Pretty cool map, especially for being your first one! I like the music (though it doesn't loop properly) and the atmosphere, it also looks pretty good considering you are using mostly (if not all) vanilla textures.

I would say it is on the easier side difficulty wise, but a couple of traps caught me off guard. I couldn't find the secret with the cyber, but I did manage to find the others, they were well hidden but not obscure.

The only complaint I have with this map is that as others in the thread have already said, the last arena feels really weird, as if a big slaughter fight was going to take place but you decided not to do it at the last second.

Overall, I really had a blast and I can't wait to see more stuff from you, you really have a lot of potential!

This is pretty good for a first map! I had a ton of fun playing it and I love the all green theme. The traps and transformations kept the map feeling dynamic which is something you don't often see in first published maps. It wasn't particularly difficult, but I thought the fights were fairly well designed and quite a bit of fun. I never get tired of blasting imp hordes with the rocket launcher, but I also wouldn't mind a bit more variety.

I think I agree with @Degree23 in there's a few areas that could stand to be filled with more monsters given how open they are, especially after you get the BFG. At the point you drop down into the final area, which is admittedly grand with its own sort of spectacle, I kind of expect to have to spam the BFG to cut through an absolute regiment of opposition. Something that leaves me covered in gallons of viscera.

But overall, it's quite engaging and a good time.

On 9/22/2021 at 6:06 PM, game said:

....

so is this a vanilla map, a gzdoom map? You didn't specify.

On 9/22/2021 at 3:40 PM, Makedounia said:

Ports tested with: GZdoom, Zandronum

Mapping format: Doom in hexen format

Upon checking (and finnishing the map, out of curiosity), it is playable in zdoom as well (:

For the mapper: I have found a couple issues and oddities that may need to be checked, so I will edit this post tomorrow with a short list. 

- When I hit this suspicious wall, it raised to the top and displayed a HOM on the side. Apparently it's meant to work like an elevator of some sort, and I must have pushed it twice and "broke" it the second time, so that might need a fix because if that happens you can't then access the isolated secret outside of the map (you could, I believe, still use an assisted archvile jump to get there). If you did intended it to be a one-time deal, then the HOM is the only thing to fix.

- In the cave annex that culminates in a high up soulsphere, there're a few instant pop-up monsters in the way. The thing is they're spoiled, which probably is a side effect of software mode, so the archvile or the hell knight and sergeants outside (or the arachnotron in the final section) are visible through the floor. A quick fix is to sink the monster sectors by a high X number of units (e.g. -1000) so there're no spoilers.

- The flood of imps/pinkies fight might need to work faster - there're gaps of nothing teleporting for several seconds, then suddenly a lost imp manages to find the tp line, which makes the fight seem a little untidy. I recommend checking this excellent tutorial on how to work on teleport setups. Likewise, it's very possible to have cleared the entire fight and still have to wait a while for the bars to get down, so I'd suggest to adjust timers or use a faster action, and also for the other bars locking the way out to the SMM, because BFGing three archviles doesn't take too long.

- In the large final section, I spotted a big HOM in the horizon, where I believe it's meant to display the sky. Looking in the editor, there're more spots like that except non-freelook players may never notice them in-game. The issue might be a software mode side effect (opengl has its quirks), and has an easy solution: you can add a sector similar to this and give it those same properties. It'll achieve what you went for, while working properly in software mode.

- A minor thing, zdoom crashes at the tally screen with a message saying something like "missing E1M2". Not sure if there's a way around that, but it isn't that relevant.

Additional opinions:

- The classic mint chocolate aesthetic, I'm biased because I'm a fan of zimmer+ashwall and different green/brown variants. This particular view was my favourite. The whole final section looked a bit bare in comparison, but I didn't mind. 

- When the BK switch revealed the next large area, I went closer to some imps and ammo laying there, only to find myself surrounded by flames without knowing where the sorcerer was. Even if the archvile reveal isn't obscured, and it's easy to neuter with knowledge, the setup still has a cool way to direct the player's attention to other noisy reveals and potentially get roasted. The telefrag for the cyb was appreciated, even though he was a non-factor at such long distance.

- The final section felt powerful enough without being anticlimactic, although sure an army of, say chaingunners or zombiemen - or mixed types of gunners - wouldn't go bad for some additional cathartic BFGing, or changing the pinkies to something like revenants or pain elementals (maybe barons?) who'd be more interesting BFG clickbait than a small group of pinkies that can't go down the stairs, but I was satisfied with what was given.

- While the flood of imps/pinkies was nice and largely simple, something about the lone SMM afterwards didn't click for me. It would be interesting if the spider was involved in that fight, like an area denial sort of threat coming from the other side, with multiple gaps between the two areas so it can attack the player. Ultimately is up to you... 

Anyways, fun first map overall, thanks for sharing.

https://youtu.be/PcqilmhVK8c

My playthrough starts at around 2:37:00.

I encountered a small issue on my playthrough: sector #736 renders damage but it shouldn't:

Very impressive for a first map.

Really cool looking skybox, fits the slime theme really well!