Depereo: Beta 1.0

So, here it is: the first (ok, second) public beta of my latest map for Doom 2. It originally started out as "Without Hope" but grew quite a bit larger and a lot of the old ideas/areas were either scrapped completely or remade into something new. Thus, it's now called Depereo. If you never took latin, it means "to perish, be utterly ruined."

What I'm looking for with the release of this beta is feedback on decorations. Obstacles, light sources, crates, trees, that kind of thing. Stuff to spruce up each area a bit. If you were the one making this map, what would you add?

An important note about this beta is that right now there is only support for the Easy difficulty setting. I will add more for each difficulty setting before the final release, but I felt this was good enough for now to get some beta testing done and feedback about the map in general.

While vanilla Doom 2 is supported, it's not recommended. I have tested this map in Doomsday, Risen3D, Eternity, and Chocolate Doom. My best recommendation is to use either Doomsday or Risen3D. Any OpenGL port, really.

You can download the beta here.

Screenshots:

I hope we don't ever run out of cool Latin words.

You just can't go wrong with a cool latin word :p

Anyone willing to playtest this for me? There's a free cookie in it for ya.

i thought it was a pretty cool level for like an early one. id say 1 thru 10 somewhere in there, was kinda easy but a pretty decent map. the only seguestion i have is in the room in you 3rd screenshot. wouldn't be cool if those ribcage things were moving.

oh and is there actully a way to get the BFG at near beginning or is it just a trap? i tried getting it 8 times and could not figure a way out of the crusher.

walligig said:

the only seguestion i have is in the room in you 3rd screenshot. wouldn't be cool if those ribcage things were moving.

do you mean moving up and down, like a crusher, or do you mean having the texture scroll? an earlier version had a scrolling texture, but it broke compatibility with vanilla Doom 2 so i changed it.

walligig said:

is there actully a way to get the BFG at near beginning or is it just a trap? i tried getting it 8 times and could not figure a way out of the crusher.

that one is a trap, but there is a BFG (and a ton of other goodies) in a secret area. not wanting to spoil the fun of finding it, i'll just say it requires several triggers to be found, and some backtracking (going back to areas previously visited) to find it.

Subatomic said:

an earlier version had a scrolling texture, but it broke compatibility with vanilla Doom 2 so i changed it.

really? are your sure about that? thats wierd back when i use the vanilla doom 2 engine scrolling textures worked fine for me.

walligig said:

really? are your sure about that? thats wierd back when i use the vanilla doom 2 engine scrolling textures worked fine for me.

the problem is that that sector is huge, over 64 linedefs, which is the maximum in vanilla doom 2. i might trim it down a bit, just make it a little smaller--it did look cool, i agree. i'd like to be able to put it back in.

and i know you said the map is easy--that's the only difficulty setting i've added so far. more will be added as i work on the map.

What I don't like about this level as it looks now is how you've neglected DOOM's lighting variety. There are lighting differences between each section, but each part has uniform lighting. The environment and combat could be enhanced by adding shadows here and there.

I'd also add one or more additional exit lines in the exit pit. If you run into it the linedef can be skipped, which makes you fall into the middle of the pit. Adding at least one more line would make this less likely or noticeable.

myk said:

What I don't like about this level as it looks now is how you've neglected DOOM's lighting variety. There are lighting differences between each section, but each part has uniform lighting. The environment and combat could be enhanced by adding shadows here and there.

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Honestly, I wasn't quite sure how to do that. Still learning as I go. How is something like that achieved--just a sector aimed out from a lightsource with a different light level, or some other method entirely?

myk said:

I'd also add one or more additional exit lines in the exit pit. If you run into it the linedef can be skipped, which makes you fall into the middle of the pit. Adding at least one more line would make this less likely or noticeable.

Falling into the pit is intentional, but I think I get what you mean. It seems a little silly to fall in and "walk" across the sky. I'll make that exit linedef bigger around the inner circumference.

Use enough of the same ceiling texture?

I think you need to get away from the whole separate rooms and halls thing, and explore the possibilities of windows, future glimpses and interconnection.

Even some height and texture variation within the rooms would be good. I'm seeing a bunch of flat, disjoint areas with singly-textured walls. Some lighting variation would be good too (although I guess you get that for free if you use and recommend engines with fancy hardware rendering)

There's little point in having more than one chainsaw on a map. Also the super secret area was overloaded, there's no point giving the player a soulsphere _and_ a megasphere at the same time.

I liked the relatively large number of secrets and look forward to a version with more monsters in.

(Also, about the title, I'm fairly sure the -eo ending means first person singular, not infinitive - that is, "I perish" - but it's been years and I might have that wrong)

Ok i just playtested it now and here is what i think.

* Some of the rooms looks pretty good (like the start room and the room of screenshot 3) but other rooms just looks too plain. Maybe u should try making them smaller and adding more things like torches, barrels etc and decorate some more. It would also be cool to make the flesh textures scrool in screenshot 3 as someone else said.

*You should add more harder monsters, since it being only easy skill lvl for now i guess u would do that with the other difficulty settings but at the start it gets way too easy. Try increasing the difficulty alot. even on easy.

*You should not have to find secrets to complete the map.
Like one of the switches wich opens a door u have to go trough to proceed. And i dont get why the yellow key area is marked as secret.


Overall a pretty nice map but u should make it alot harder and more detailed in some areas, some of the rooms looks very empty.
othervise good work.

Eternus said:

Use enough of the same ceiling texture?

No.

RjY said:

I think you need to get away from the whole separate rooms and halls thing, and explore the possibilities of windows, future glimpses and interconnection.

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By this, do you mean how the player has to teleport to each new area? If so, I agree. As for windows, I haven't quite figured out how to make them yet. There's one outdoor area toward the end of the map where a pit of slime rises... the sector behind that pit has a "window" of sorts, but that's about it. I haven't had much luck making them, so it's definitely something I plan to work on and learn more.

RjY said:

Some lighting variation would be good too

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This is something I've asked about in the Doom Editing section of the forum. Better lighting will be added and worked on in later versions as I get the hang of it.

RjY said:

There's little point in having more than one chainsaw on a map. Also the super secret area was overloaded, there's no point giving the player a soulsphere _and_ a megasphere at the same time.

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Two chainsaws... you're right, dunno how I missed that. The second one shouldn't be there. And the super secret area was just an idea I had about using multiple switches/triggers to reveal a hidden area. What it contains now was just for the sake of having stuff in it. The final release won't be like that.

bullsquid said:

Maybe u should try making them smaller and adding more things like torches, barrels etc and decorate some more.

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That was the main reason for releasing this beta, to get suggestions on what kinds of decorations should be added--and where.

bullsquid said:

* You should add more harder monsters, since it being only easy skill lvl...

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More monsters will definitely be added, not just on Easy, but eventually on all skill levels.

bullsquid said:

* You should not have to find secrets to complete the map.
Like one of the switches wich opens a door u have to go trough to proceed. And i dont get why the yellow key area is marked as secret.

[/b]

Honestly, I don't see what's wrong with having essential secrets. Also, the yellow key is marked secret because it's hidden, until you approach it. If the player were to skip that area, they wouldn't know it was even there. Personally, I like to explore every inch of a map... games like Serious Sam, F.E.A.R., BioShock, are likely what has influenced me that way.

bullsquid said:

Overall a pretty nice map but u should make it alot harder and more detailed in some areas, some of the rooms looks very empty.
othervise good work.

The rooms do look empty, and as I said, that's because I'm still working to add decorations and such. If you have any other specific suggestions about what kind of decorations and where you'd like to see them, feel free to let me know.

Thanks for playtesting the map, everyone who has, and offered tips, suggestions, and help in general. I appreciate it!

Torches are always a nice decoration AND a light source in gl ports like doomsday and risen3d.
For red rooms use red torches etc. u get the point.
Also dead bodies, hanging torsos can add some nice touch to some of the rooms. Obstacles like pillars can also be used.
For a better and more creepy feel, make a room darker but add torches to it to make it light up. Torches are best placed in corners of rooms or around switches, doors etc.

Anyway just add what u feel is appropriate for the room. Different decoration mix with different type of textures. like a green room green torches and green pillars maybe?
To make rooms less empty add platforms, hallways, outside areas, stairs, lifts, pillars etc... my first maps also looked very plain in places but it gets better the more maps u make.

Also many similar square rooms dosent feel very good after a while. try doing smaller rooms and more hallways, doors or whatever