The Oasis - A single ZDoom map (RELEASED)

[Lorenz0]

The Oasis is a medium-sized map made in UDMF. It's a result of me playing around with texture packs I didn't know at all (Powerslave tex, and Circle tex), and a theme I never worked with before (egyptian stuff, mostly). Find out yourselves how that turned out:

 

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/s-u/theoasis

 

No jumping/crouching, but freelook is recommended. There are basically two difficulty settings in total. ITYTD and HNTR are the same. HMP and UV are the same.

 

The music was made by Crunchynut44.

 

Screenshots:

 

Feedback would be greatly appreciated ;)

 

Edited November 15, 2018 by Lorenz0

[Big Ol Billy]

Those are some sexy screens!

[eharper256]

Looks pretty sweet, was looking for a new map to play this evening.

 

EDIT: Ok, forget that, I died in the starting area. Way too much starting heat for me.

Edited October 23, 2018 by eharper256

[wintertowns]

Very nice visuals and geometrical design overall. Texturework is top notch. I guess mouselook should be a thing, as there are some potential underwater play.

 

Gameplaywise, I think that it felt a little bit like setpieces from 4-5 different levels stitched together. I could imagine a multilevel wad that use these ideas, but develop the gameplay of each area further. As a result, the pacing felt very uneven as of now, but what was there was still polished in its parts.

[k3ksmus]

Hey, I really enjoyed your map. The pacing, amount of monsters, ammo, difficulty, etc, were all superb for me, and the variety in design between the different areas was very nice, I think it all comes together nicely. I ended up running out of ammo after clearing the massive lava room, but was able to progress by using the chainsaw and the two shotgun ammos placed just inside the door to the next area. Really nice work.

 

Just one thing though, I'm using gzDoom, not using any of the compatibility stuff in the settings, but I am using software rendering. In the images attached you can see the skybox wall textures are glitched for me in this entire area, however since the other players haven't complained, it could just be a gzDoom thing or just be on my end.

 

[Marlamir]

I really enjoyed this especially because of the theme that's is not see very often in doom. Gameplay feels very nice, maybe i will give shotgun to player right from start. Layout and texturing are also very nice. I have nothing bad to say, this is very nice map. Keep it up!

[Lorenz0]

Thanks for the comments guys, I appreciate it ;)

 

@k3ksmus It works fine for me, so I don't know what's causing this. It may be something on your end, since like you said, no one else has complained about it.

 

Btw. the download link has been replaced with an updated version of the wad, which just had some minor elements changed. Everything should be fine, but let me know if you find any bugs, before I upload the map to idgames.

 

 

[jerrysheppy]

Tried this.  Looks good and played decently well.  Couple of thoughts--

 

1) Killing the player if they try jumping down down the second tier of the lavafalls in the red key room (after they've already dropped down one fall with no harm) is a bit of a dick move.  Just make an invisible wall there if you want to stop them from going further, or a teleport back up.

 

2) The animations in the last room, where the lava is trickling down the cracks on the walls, seemed like they were running too fast-- almost like strobing on and off.  Come to think of it, the lavafall animations may have been running faster than they ought to, also, but it was less obvious there since freely falling vertical lava can reasonably move faster than lava oozing along horizontal cracks and stuff.  Anyway, if I were you, I'd go into your animdefs and increase the time between frames by double or more.  But that would just be my preference.

[Jimmy]

Finally got round to playing this 'cos I really dig the theme! And more UDMF maps are always welcome here. :D

 

The map starts out pretty breezy (I didn't take any damage until the baron room... I rocketed myself) but by the third key grab you're fighting for your life - very intense difficulty curve. I have to confess that the two deaths I did experience were completely embarrassing, one was to a caco fireball I walked right into and the other was to a chaingunner I didn't notice who was perched behind a door. The encounters are overall enjoyable, with the occasional surprise archvile that really keeps you on your toes. The fight in the big magma chamber is the deadliest of all, but it can be partially skipped, it seems, as the red skull seems to lower on a timer. Thematically this map is tied together really nice by the two resource packs you used, equal parts water-filled paradise and lava-filled death tomb. Love me some of that. :P

 

I have only a couple of issues to mention:

- Please vary up the alignment on steps like this! A quick trick is to set them all to lower-unpegged, but if the texture repeats too often, then manually adjust the x alignment too.

- Jumping being disabled meant I wasn't sure if I could climb the steps in that corridor to the east. I of course tried it eventually and sure enough I was able to, but the risk of falling into the lava was kinda intimidating, heh. Maybe you could tighten up this room and convey that these steps are navigable somehow? Maybe join them together a bit closer?

- I think this map would really benefit from some stark lighting in the indoors segments. Particularly in that first room, you have quite a bright room, which is spotted with candelabras. Consider adding some radial lighting (that is, baked into the map, not dynamic lighting, ideally) around the light sources in this room, and perhaps adding some sky lights to add some bright patches here and there for effect. You also have a river of magma behind the southern blue door, which would really benefit from having dark sectors to the edges and making the magma flow sector the brightest. As this is a UDMF map you also have the ability to change floor brightness independently from sector brightness, so I'd recommend making the lava quite bright (not fullbright, perhaps) so that it stands out, as it's the main hazard in the map.

 

Good stuff!