Phmlspd - Boom maps for people who like shooting monsters

SDA. That's at least 2 maps you've ended now with a large group of arch-viles -.- Never found that bfg you mentioned, although I think it has to do with the switch in the persistent lifts leading to the yellow key.

About the fda, I saw the bars were colored but didn't know they were ammo/weapons, then just forgot about em after the first few runs until I came back with the yellow key.

Doing 3 hks/2 barons with 4 more hks teleporting in for the red key could work, I agree that the mancubii really don't add much up there other than pissing off a few more demons with their double shot.

Uh oh. I think you might not like the updated map if archviles are starting to annoy you... There's even more of them. :)

Specifics :

That should be it, hopefully. Along with various tests in GL, I did a max on software mode and didn't notice any issues.

Just posting to add that thanks to the helpful folks in the editing forum, I've fixed most of the issues hawkwind encountered, without breaking demo compatibility (hopefully ; I just watched a few demos other people made for each changed map at 8x speed and didn't notice desyncs). The latest upload doesn't contain any map11 change, it's just about these fixes.

Much better. Basically only one thing missing ...

Map 09 ...

Check your dooryel/red/blu2 textures near sectors 295, 293 and 291. They really need an X offset fix.

It baffles me to completely miss stuff like that after playing these maps over and over. Thanks for the heads up !

Hmm... First failure this week. I simply didn't find enough time, so all I got is a layout (and not even complete at that). I still want to add much more monsters, a decent exit part, some detail for visual contrast, another sky (which should result in HOMs in software mode right now, didn't want to take care of that before the layout is final), and of course I'll have to spend a few hours playtesting and tweaking stuff.

I've updated the map for the sake of staying on schedule (whatever that means, as I am going to properly finish the map tomorrow ; so much for "one day per map"). There's probably not much point checking the map for now.

I'll hold off on trying it until you finish it for fda reasons ;P Sometimes map ideas just need a lot more time to do right - like the map I'm working on now has been what, 2 weeks now? Just keep focused on what you need to do.

Map12 is done. Everything seems to work fine, and gameplay is roughly where I want it.

Fun. I see someone found where nochance and a few other maps got its midi ;P Wonder when I'll use it ... Anyway, it's mostly crowd control as usual, solid fights. Panicked after getting the blue key so didn't see much there, but it looks good. No problems afaik.

As for my gameplay, I should stop trying to speedrun to parts of the map I haven't gotten to yet, keeps the fda full of unnecessary deaths.

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/attachment.php?postid=854222

Map 12 is excellent ! One minor bug ... thing 439 is stuck in thing 444 - chaingunners.

Great FDA. Those two cybies completely dominated the caco/PE swarm, heh. It's a shame infinitelytallness stopped this run.

Seeing from AB's perspective, I'm happy with how the map plays. I'm glad you both enjoyed the map.

One minor bug ... thing 439 is stuck in thing 444 - chaingunners.

Thanks, fixed.

Also added a cell charge pack near the plasma gun, I wanted to and forgot about it.

I see someone found where nochance and a few other maps got its midi

I actually don't ! I extracted it from Scythe with SlumpEd, which I guess might be how Death Destiny got it too. Erik Alm didn't cite specific sources for his music choices.

It is a very nice tune, although I find Alm and DD have set the bar so high with their fantastic maps using that midi, it almost feels "wrong" to put it in anything that isn't a completely red hellish map. As you can see, Map12 tries to be like that at first then kind of misses the mark to go back to my beloved bricks... :)

Phml said:

I actually don't ! I extracted it from Scythe with SlumpEd, which I guess might be how Death Destiny got it too. Erik Alm didn't cite specific sources for his music choices.

It is a very nice tune, although I find Alm and DD have set the bar so high with their fantastic maps using that midi, it almost feels "wrong" to put it in anything that isn't a completely red hellish map. As you can see, Map12 tries to be like that at first then kind of misses the mark to go back to my beloved bricks... :)

hahah, it's a symphony x midi, can't remember which one though. Go find it ;P

Cool, thanks. It's "absence of light".

Did a FDA for map 12. Managed to clear with no deaths, but there were certainly a few points where I came close to it. I certainly would have had a laugh if I failed at that point where I missed the teleporter.

Came up ~20-25 kills short of true 100% kills here. I'm willing to bet most of them went to go hide somewhere given all the running I did in the building.

Nice FDA. The part where you shot rockets at arachnotrons while side-stepping one inch at a time looked very cool. :)

The monsters you missed were a few PE/cacos traps with lowering floors on the way to the yellow key (same kind as the one you saw with barons of hell). I haven't done a great job at making things easy to read in this map. Going to have to do better next time !

Map13 today. Unfortunately, same deal as last week. I just didn't find the time to do more than the layout.

The map might seem odd, so I'm going to explain right away. I started with a simple idea in mind : make a big map with as much monsters as possible while still playable and fun, and keeping smooth performance in GLBoom+.

In hindsight, nodebuilders choke way before GLBoom+, so that's where the performance wall is. I originally had lots of interconnectivity, and the node build time jumped for 2 minutes without any Thing on the map except for the player start and teleport destinations, then 3 minutes with 2K imps in the map. Deleting the few sectors connecting rooms, the node build time lowered down to ten seconds... I think I'm going to stick with teleporters for this one. :)

As for the map, it's obviously a lot of copy and paste, even more than usual. I don't have the time to spend making detailed and different rooms, in fact even with copypaste this layout took me seven hours.

An important note about the texture choice ; it's heavily inspired by Sunder Map11. So, if you think it looks good, Insane Gazebo is the man who deserves a thumbs up. On the other hand, if you feel my map is completely ugly, I take full credit for that !

While the map is completable, there's not a whole lot to do right now. Many of the teleporters are broken or not built yet. I haven't really added monsters, the imps are there to test node build time. I'm just uploading to stay on schedule, and will properly finish tomorrow.

Well, that was interesting. I added some stuff and ZenNode refused to build the map, switched to glBSP and while it built the map, the doomguy started noclipping through everything. Finally tried ZDBSP and it works while being fast, and apparently demos don't desync... So far. Crossing fingers.

I haven't even managed to beat the map yet, partly because of lack of time, partly because I keep rushing early and getting my ass kicked. While I'm positive it can be finished in its current state, I might tweak monsters and health if I find it too slow/tedious tomorrow.

Edit : had some sectors with a height of 50 rather than the supposed 520. Duh !

Hmm, wonder if this fda will desynch now ... yeah one is named sda, but I took it like a minute afterwards to check to see which key was easier to snag (not counting the fact the yellow key pillars blocking the bfg are blue, not yellow keyed). I didn't get around to checking the red key area yet.

As for the map, it's interesting. Very lag-inducing (the times I went for the yellow key early, when the cacodemon doors opened, it lagged to hell and back). It feels kinda copy/paste too cause of the intermediate rooms before the keys, not sure how different those are. Gonna be interesting to see how many arch-viles you jam-packed into that little room in the center ;P

My gaming rig is pretty beefy by 2007 standards so designing to hit a performance wall with it was bound to give slowdowns to some other systems. Even then, it seems a bit choppy as soon as I lose a few frames (never got below 55, but am usually at 60 in other maps, capped by vsync, all the time).

Playable for me so I'll keep the map as it is, I'm egotistical that way - that and it'd really annoy me to have to butcher large parts of the map.

It is indeed very copypaste, in fact there's only two different rooms. The main room was copypasted to the left, right and top, and the intermediate sections were copypasted in-between. I then did changes here and there to make the rooms different, but at its core it's very much the same architecture over and over.

Don't worry about archies, they're all confined to the east part... ;)


Uploaded a version with the yellow key opening the yellow doors.

Edit : watched both of your attempts now. Nice. I like how the map plays seen from your perspective. It's funny, we used the same strategy (grab the plasma gun, go for the blue key) ; I had less success than you so far. Got to balance speed and killing stuff as not to get swarmed ; just like you do in your later tries, which worked great.

The one thing I'm not happy about is it's not obvious at all you can get to the HK/revs platforms at first, and it's not obvious there's a juicy reward (invul) at the top of each one either. I think I'm going to raise the invul platforms (and it'll be lowered like a lift by pressing on it) and add some light.

Edit 2 : ok, changed the invul platforms into lifts, added two more invul spheres and a megasphere in the blue key room, and moved a few vertexes around. It seems the not-so-deaf cybie behaves like it should now.

So I completely forgot about easier difficulties. I took care of that by adding a few things (BFG with RL right at the start, more megaspheres and invul spheres), and just replaced the THINGS lump.

Watching my 52 minute demo... Alright, everything fine, no desync.
Trying a skill 2 run... Okay, everything fi...

Hey. Wait, I just picked the three keys, why aren't the floors with cyberdemons near the exit lowered already ?

That's when I realised the way I set up the lowering floors, it won't lower if you go for the yellow key first.

So, moved a few vertexes around, and as I would have to rebuild nodes now I also added cell charge packs to the west and east intermission rooms - like the north room already has ; I just forgot about it, and as my runs proved there's more than enough ammo I didn't bother. While giving 1600 more cells (or 40 BFG shots) might seem a lot, that map was intended to have ammo overkill and it wasn't actually the case as I was left scrounging for BFG ammo to fend off the last few cyberdemons.

Alright, let's try the map now... No. No no no no no no no. The not-so-deaf cyberdemon that finally became deaf went back to waking up early again. Aaargh.

After ten minutes of tweaking vertexes here and there and merging sectors only to end up with the same result, I split the big main sector and now it seems to be fine. Haven't had time to do a full run yet so I can't guarantee it is bug free, but as it was the only problem before, I'm hoping there won't be any other issues.

when I played the cygaydemons on teh ledge never shot me if I stayed far enough away (like their shooting distance was near the lava start and not beyond). Not sure if that's normal boom behavior or what (thought cybers could shoot infinitely far).

Same here. It's odd too because if you're at the top level, after the stairs between hell knights, some cybies will shoot to you, but at ground level they don't start until you're near the lava.

I don't see it as a problem - in fact, I'm glad it works that way. It'd be too easy to set up infighting with stuff coming from the main room if they shot at infinite range.

Failed beginning of a map13 route that would probably be faster. Don't have it fleshed out yet but its kinda annoying with long periods of easiness peppered with a couple bits of luck and the mastermind part is made of aids. Somehow I should get that invuln by the reverents then maybe backtrack to the beginning and use the 2 invulns inside the exit to kill the viles, some of which are bunched up on above stair platforms. But not sure if I want to. Then again I have no life.
http://www.speedyshare.com/files/21107724/phml-13-routeFail-ggg.lmp

Hmm...

I'm not quite sure I'd go for the red key first myself. It's only a ~30 second boost over blue key, probably ending up using a lot more time killing the stuff archies ressurected than anything else.

Going for an invul and taking out the archies right away like you suggested is another option, but one that I feel might be too risky and possibly time consuming. There's about 20 archviles IIRC, and they're going to be well hidden in a mass of spectres, imps and other stuff.

Of course, getting all three keys ASAP gives you 6 more cybies (2 for red key + 4 final) to infight with... Could more than make up for archies roaming around, who knows. It's going to be a tough route though, if anyone can pull this off it's you.

Me, I think I'll just stick to what I have, more or less ; maybe waking up everything but archies/spectres and provoking as much infighting as possible in the blue key room.

I only got about 42:00, with saves and iddt though, using that starting route. If I remember, I first killed all the non-top-row-ledge reverenets/hell knights (just using the rev invuln to kill more revs), then secret invuln killed the top cyber layer and both top revs and hell knights since they already were toward that side. Then got the hell knight megasphere, jumped down to grab the blue key, killed all viles with exit invulns, then did all that tedious mountain climbing.
Maybe should have tried to kill the next cyber layer(s) from above while I was up there since they took forever at the end since ammo was far away.

Posting to say I finally decided to stop this little exercise. It's been fun and I learned a lot, in fact I think having a Doom schedule for ~3 months was good enough ; keeping at it for a longer time would be pointless.

I've realised creating maps can be quite frustrating for me. I like having and implementing ideas, planning stuff on paper, balancing gameplay, and seeing the finished product. I like playing the levels and still have a blast replaying anything I made for this.

The actual part of moving vertexes around, choosing textures, looking for resources that fit with my vision as closely as possible, though ? I find all that stuff tedious. Fun when I finish it or manage to do something I want exactly how I want it, but the actual work is, well, it's like work ; in a bad way.

This isn't to say I've decided to stop making maps ; rather, I'm going to split the tedious part in smaller chunks so I don't grow too bored of it. I still plan to keep adding maps to this wad, but updates are probably going to be sporadical from now on.

I understand where you're coming from there, just don't forget about your ideas if you hold off on mapping them! Looking forward to getting some more maps like the first one of yours I played (that one with all the green brick and the crazy big room at the end which you could 'theoretically' arch-vile multi-jump to the top of ;).

That's why I often just highlight all lines, ctrl+2 to select double sided, spam same texture on top/bottom of all front/back sides (in doombuilder 1) for maps where I only care about gameplay.

just don't forget about your ideas if you hold off on mapping them!

Definitely not. I put everything on paper first, and I've got enough ideas for more than a full megawad. My problem is basically the opposite of mapper's block, tons of ideas but no willingness to physically do it in DB2.

Looking forward to getting some more maps like the first one of yours I played (that one with all the green brick and the crazy big room at the end which you could 'theoretically' arch-vile multi-jump to the top of

Not sure I'm actually going to do more maps like that, at least not in the recent future. One of the most important lessons learned from Phmlspd is putting more hours in doesn't make the map any more fun to play and definitely makes the map less fun to make. Between 5 and 15 hours (depending on map size) seems to be the right spot for me.

That said, I've got this large map made between Bloodlst and Phmlspd that was never released. Final area wasn't done, and it uses textures from CC4-tex ; at the time, I didn't know how to add textures without merging the whole wad. Probably going to finish architecture, rebalance gameplay and post it in the near future, though I don't think it's that great for the amount of hours invested in.

That's why I often just highlight all lines, ctrl+2 to select double sided, spam same texture on top/bottom of all front/back sides (in doombuilder 1) for maps where I only care about gameplay.

I definitely liked go3.wad. Very enjoyable. There's no time to stop and think "hey wait, there's only one texture there" with so much action going on. :)

Can't do that myself, though. Texture choice, detail, atmosphere can be completely unrelated to gameplay just as they can be closely tied with it, and I personally like the second approach (at least, that's what I'm trying to accomplish).

I'll test out every single one of those maps you made so far with scoredoom sometime. Since I'm a big fan of those slaughter maps, I'll be looking forward to taking them all on.