Deja-Vu.wad Hard, complex Doom2 map!

http://home.comcast.net/~bubbasteve8/DejaVu.wad

Here is my map! It is a doom2 map that replaces level 1 containing lots of challenge, interesting combat situations, Puzzles, and believe me when I say it lives up to its name!

Let me know what you guys think?
And NO cheating! lol.

I had started this map years ago and had long since stopped playing doom, but comming across these forums got me hyped up so I finished it, with a few more changes and add-ons.

I have not really tried to race through it that much but so far my best time on UV is 37 min.

there are some places where you must really look around and/or figure things out. So don't give up. For as complex as it is I triple checked and full proofed it for avoiding possibilities of getting stuck.

P.S. and no I did not start out with the 1st level of doom2 for that one area.

Enjoy and let me know what you guys think?

Interesting map. I especially liked the monster placement, but I think there were too many switches and jump and run features. Is this your first released map? You may want to release it to the archive.

That was certainly a lot of megaspheres. One third or something of those would probably have been enough :P

It was occasionally a bit confusing to see when and where new switches appeared, and which ones would need to be hit again.

But.. mostly it was linear enough to prevent too much wandering around aimlessly. A fine effort.

I really liked it, creative and focused on gameplay and kept me entertained. It would be fun for a speed run (probably harder than max kills run). Is your 37 uv run speed (dash to exit without killing everyone) or max kills? One note is the part with cyber crushers, their rockets harmlessly collide against their wall (I think 1 pixel lower and they wouldn't) unless that was intended. The first warp maze was fun, the second toward the end I preferred to use the map. I like those '1 chance to get' secrets at the start and end. I never really got lost either which is good considering many switch hunting maps do get me lost. I used prboom and had a few visual bugs but didn't really bother me.

I found it rather entertaining. The traps and ambushes were pretty good. I made it through from scratch on my second or third try but I think I left one monster alive, the cyberdemon that you fight near the end in the square room where monsters teleport around (I think this room has a couple of slime trails or something like that which you could fix).

The checkerboard teleport puzzle was perhaps too long, but I found the first one tolerable and more unique. I used paper and pencil on these, though. I'm not going to memorize all that :p

That room with the stair-like catwalk that has teleporter flat floors could take something more. I'd change the flats to something else because the silver and red ones look cut up, give the ground below some (least) damage, and perhaps allow a few flying monsters to teleport in after you visit different areas, especially lost souls and maybe a cacodemon or two (or maybe a lone pain elemental at one point).

I'm going to be completely honest here. I almost fell asleep while playing this. And least because of the teleport puzzles.

Very good. I found this map to be quite fun. I like maps where you get tons of health/ammo and get to see how fast you can slaughter everything. >=)

I thought the puzzles were fun to figure out, though I would imagine that element would deter some people. Same for the simple/abstract architecture, though I rather liked it though. It kinda reminded me of some of TNT's stuff for some reason. Anyway, nice work.

If you're interested, here's a demo I made of your map. I think it's a lot of fun to watch other people play my maps, and plus you might see what the player does and whether it is consistant with what you want. It's my first UVMax after my initial run, so I had some idea how to navigate the map (though it's a bit complicated... I got lost and looked in an editor several times to figure out what I was supposed to be doing, though that doesn't bother me much.):

DOWNLOAD: UVMax in 21:53, recorded with PrBoom V2.4.8.5 Beta -complevel 2

Nice time. The time I played through I ended up with "time sucks". Could you upload it somewhere else? FileFront always, always, always tells me:

Your download has failed. There were no available download servers. Click here to try your download again. Click here to try your download again.

Maybe they block ISPs off or something. (In short, it is crap.)

Edit: Nevermind, I got it through a proxy.

RHINO, one thing you could do is remove the Doom Builder camera (thing 32000). In some engines (such as the normal Doom2) it doesn't let the game load the level unless you add thing 32000 to the executable through DeHackEd, as I did. You should be able to remove it without otherwise altering the level (so Death-Destiny's demo will still work).

Death-Destiny said:
DOWNLOAD: UVMax in 21:53, recorded with PrBoom V2.4.8.5 Beta -complevel 2

Strange... something failed in PrBoom's compatibility because this demo works in PrBoom+ (at -complevel 2) but not in Doom2, where it desynchs when you enter the rising stair room. You never get to hit the switch that activates the stairs. PrBoom+ doesn't detect any overflows so it must be some other issue (or an unknown overflow).

During playback, the latest beta of Chocolate Doom closes with an error when the first door is opened:

Failed to set process affinity mask (120)
W_Win32_OpenFile: Unable to MapViewOfFile() for D:\DOOM\doom2.wad
W_Win32_OpenFile: Unable to MapViewOfFile() for d:\doom\w\dejavu.wad
W_Win32_OpenFile: Unable to MapViewOfFile() for d:\doom\l\dddeja~1.lmp

Oh ok, yes I can do that I will take that DB camera out.

And that best time I mentioned that I got was with killing everything, not racing past. Has anyone tried that? Racing through killing minimal monsters? I figured it would be a Major Pain in the ASS with mosters still in an area where you go back to over and over releasing new monsters each time!

Yeah I was thinking of maybe taking some Mega spheres out for UV at least.

Also how many of you found the only secret area?
In fact thats the only way to get the Double Barrel on UV.

As for the cyber crushers yes I did not want them to be able to shoot you, I feel there rocket blasts on near walls would make it to hard to beat them, besides, when you were in the tower they had a huge advantage over you, thus later I gave the player the advantage, besides, there were still plenty of cybers in other areas.

For the most part, do you think this map was to easy?

And this demo I downloaded of yours, I do not have Boom, I don't think anyways, can I run it with legacy doom for Doom2?

Oh and as far as running and jumping parts? What exactly do you mean by that?

You should be able to just run without jumping to at the most at anytime to beat the map, In other words you should be able to beat it and get where you need to by using plain old Doom2!

I tested this by just running without jumping in my Legacy doom, I hope that the run speeds match, do they?

If not is this map still 100% doable with normal doom2?

Let me know if it is not

RHINO said:
Also how many of you found the only secret area?
In fact thats the only way to get the Double Barrel on UV.

I found that (that ledge up there).

As for the cyber crushers yes I did not want them to be able to shoot you, I feel there rocket blasts on near walls would make it to hard to beat

At least one of them actually did hurt me that way. They can also hurt one when teleporting back to the tower, at least the one facing the entry into it.

For the most part, do you think this map was to easy?

I liked the difficulty. It makes the level more about optimizing the carnage rather than gritting your teeth because you feel you're going to die any second. The difficulty could be increased a bit, but shouldn't be by much, in my opinion.

And this demo I downloaded of yours, I do not have Boom, I don't think anyways, can I run it with legacy doom for Doom2?

It was supposed to be compatible with the standard executable but something went wrong during the recording. It requires PrBoom+ (which can emulate both Doom and Boom well enough to run their demos). In Legacy the demo will desynch sooner or later because it behaves differently.

Just click the wad then ctrl-click the lmp to drag both into prboom plus if you want to play boom demos.

My speed run was only 6.5ish minutes faster than DD's max run:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/04cktf

Screwed up or got lost in a couple places but its mostly good. I don't get how the writing in the automap is supposed to be a clue for the last warp maze (I just do that part while looking at the automap).

As far as too easy or not, the answer varies with players skills and preferences. Plus even for relatively easier maps difficulty varies depending on how the map is played (speed vs max vs tyson etc).

If you look on the map when you in the last puzzle after you grab the computer map, It shows the hint.

Well if you look below that you will see a similar room to the one your in, except twice the size, thats the room that you walked up the wall stairs 4 times.

My new UV best time with killing all monsters is 29:48

Demo to come

I cannot beat it trying to rush through, I keep getting killed, though I know if I would beat it Id get like a 16 min or so, I ran through it in 13 min without monsters

myk said:

RHINO, one thing you could do is remove the Doom Builder camera (thing 32000). In some engines (such as the normal Doom2) it doesn't let the game load the level unless you add thing 32000 to the executable through DeHackEd, as I did. You should be able to remove it without otherwise altering the level (so Death-Destiny's demo will still work).

Is it bug of old releases of DB? DB 1.68 puts 0 in flag field for camera thing and vanilla does not have any problems. Or maybe mappers do not use Ctrl+W for camera and place it manually or something...

You can fix this pwad by searching in hex 00 7d 07 00 and replacing with 00 7d 00 00

myk said:

Strange... something failed in PrBoom's compatibility because this demo works in PrBoom+ (at -complevel 2) but not in Doom2, where it desynchs when you enter the rising stair room. You never get to hit the switch that activates the stairs. PrBoom+ doesn't detect any overflows so it must be some other issue (or an unknown overflow).

During playback, the latest beta of Chocolate Doom closes with an error when the first door is opened

Works fine for me with doom2+ and chocolate (with fixed pwad and renamed demo)

entryway said:
Works fine for me with doom2+ and chocolate (with fixed pwad and renamed demo)

Hmm, yes, it does synch in Doom2 that way. I guess it's the way thing 32000 is being handled in the demo, then. I suppose it alters the THINGS lump in a way it confuses the demo that was recorded without it (since PrBoom+ ignores it instead of applying it). I still get a crash in Chocolate Doom, though, but we might not be using the same version (I'm using this one).

Wouldn't it be better to make PrBoom+ allow thing 32000 but as a harmless thing, rather than ignore it for Doom compatibility? Hacking Doom to read thing 32000 with DeHackEd is less troublesome than removing the thing from the level (see exp(x)'s comment on this post). We're talking about Doom compatibility, after all, not Doom disruptability :p

Perhaps the best thing to do is to make it handle thing 32000 exactly like Doom does, during Doom compatibility. Other modes or compatibilities don't need to be affected (not sure how Boom would deal with the cam, though). It's good to add ease-of-use if there are no side effects, but not so much if changes occur.

RHINO said:
If not is this map still 100% doable with normal doom2?

Only if the Doom2+ patch is applied to the executable, because otherwise the level can induce visplane overflows, as seen in Death-Destiny's demo. (It also requires the removal or nullification of the DB cam, which we talked about above).

Ok sry guys, I just now updated it without any DB cams.

But let me know if it still gives you the same problem cus I may have missed one, but i hope I got em all

RHINO said:
Ok sry guys, I just now updated it without any DB cams.

Yeah, they're gone, thanks.