throwing the ball around. a community......experiment

[hedgehog]

7 hours ago, Death Egg said:

I remember there being one of these before. Never got finished sadly.

The project you linked to looks like a chainmap, though -- whereas the idea behind this one is that each contributor creates their own separate map, based on the same starting area posted at the beginning of the thread. At the end, in other words, the idea is not to have a single map with several authors, but rather a number of different, completely independent interpretations of the same basic "theme" (for lack of a better term). It's kind of like having the mapping equivalent of a writing prompt, and seeing what different mappers come up with when they each run with it on their own.

[joshthenesnerd]

18 hours ago, Death Egg said:

I remember there being one of these before. Never got finished sadly.

but that one was turn-based, with this one everyone uses the original file to make their own individual levels rather than adding on to the most recent one.

[CorianderCastor]

I should throw my hat into the ring on this.

 

Reminds me of this Keen 3 community pack. But that's also not at all what this is.

[Major Arlene]

Alright, here's my take: Spectre

https://imgur.com/lbpY68z

[Pegleg]

Can you update the OP with the deadline and the maps that have already been posted?

[joshthenesnerd]

@Major Arlene i like your level so far, but the linedef action and the button after it cannot open in vanilla because they use boom format custom actions. i'm loving what you got, but please keep it vanilla.

[joshthenesnerd]

4 hours ago, Pegleg said:

Can you update the OP with the deadline and the maps that have already been posted?

i have done it. i've also edited up the post as a whole, however i don't know how to delete a spoiler tag after it gets emptied.

[Major Arlene]

Okay, this should hopefully be a little bit more vanilla friendly. I don't have a plain old doom2.exe to test with so there may be something I missed, but I changed format to vanilla Doom 2 so should hopefully be all vanilla actions. And I thought Boom was limiting >.<

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9267hy1s4p28nda/spectre2.wad?dl=0

[joshthenesnerd]

@Major Arlene sorry it took me so long to get back to you, you changed a button to W1 door open stay. which is walk to activate. i'm gonna change it quickly in the one on my machine here, but can you change it and re-upload for everyone else? i'll be back soon with a demo and my opinions.

[Pegleg]

@Major Arlene

Run your level in Chocolate Doom--if it runs there, you should have no issues with vanilla compatibility. You can always also use Chocorenderlimits just to make sure that you won't exceed the visplane and sidedef limits during play.

 

And yes, the limits on vanilla can be exasperating at times, but you just have to keep them in mind and not let either the detail get out of hand or the room size get too large and make sure you don't have too many moving floors or scrolling textures. But it's all manageable. By the way, kudos for being willing to try for vanilla, when you spend most of your time with UDMF and GZDoom.

[Major Arlene]

okay, one more time lol

https://www.dropbox.com/s/a39k3801k6m0tyz/spectre3.wad?dl=0

[joshthenesnerd]

@Major Arlene played through the level. i think i hit the switch that opens the exit too early. i could be wrong, but i included the demo so you see what i mean. all in all, i thought the level was quite challenging. the demo maybe my 3rd or 4th attempt to beat the level. i thought the pacing was good and the monster placement kept it tense where it needed to be. however i do have a few small issues with this level. i thought the  black wall texture in the spectre room made it harder than i needed to be to see the spectres, and seeing them would make it less hard move around during the spectre encounter. i also thought that the texture in the hallway between the spectre encounter and the blue key felt really out of place following the dark texture of the previous room. outside of those two, the level was great but i felt like if i were to 100% the level, i would need a bit more ammo on the way to the final encounter. perhaps 3 or 4 little drops of shells behind the doors where second bunch of spectres are hiding. 

arelenespectre.zip

[CaptainResident]

On 1/2/2019 at 7:46 PM, joshthenesnerd said:

we're working with limit-removing vanilla. so, vanilla format but don't worry about visplanes and various other limits. dynamic lights and coloured sectors are mostly a UDMF thing.

Wonderful, thank you for clarification! I'll probably have one that messes with lighting colors and whatnot for other uses then. I'll probably get to making my own pretty soon.

[joshthenesnerd]

due date extended for now. i'd say once we get one more submission i'll start to compile the wad. i still will accept more, but the compiling will begin at that point.

[Dutch Doomer]

I once had an idea to build an complete map from start to finish, just the basic layout without any detail. Only using a few textures and not placing any items. Just basicly an empty underdetalied map with no gameplay. Then let the Doom community have their go with it, and see what they could come up with. I thought that would have been a cool community project.

 

This could be interesting :) Might try something when I have some free time.

[hedgehog]

@Major Arlene I hope it is not too late for feedback. I enjoyed your map; I thought it looked good and played well. Combat was a bit hard for my taste, but in small maps I don't mind that so much.

 

There were two things that bothered me:

 

Like @joshthenesnerd I found ammo to be a little on the stingy side, plus I kind of wished I had a more powerful weapon to deal with some of the larger groups of monsters. If you don't want to water down the challenge, perhaps you could at least include an extra weapon and/or some additional ammo in a secret, thus creating an optionally easier way to play through the map. I personally wouldn't have minded a secret rocket launcher, to make fighting the revenants and hell knights a bit less grindy.

 

I also found the way the exit is opened to be very unintuitive and had to replay/reload the level several times before finally figuring out what I needed to do:

Spoiler

There are two identical computer terminals on either side of the room, neither of which stand out as something the player can interact with, yet both can be activated. The one on the right can be activated to reveal a switch (which as far as I could tell plays no sound, and is very easy to miss) beneath the one on the left, which can in turn be used to open the exit. However (!), you can open the exit simply by activating the computer terminal on the left, before the switch has been revealed.

 

Wouldn't it perhaps make more sense to either have the button visible from the start, or to automatically reveal it once the monsters are killed? Or both: have it visible, but blocked in such a way that the player cannot activate it until the monsters in the final room are killed -- e.g. with a small pillar or something similar that lowers once the fight is over?

 

 

[Major Arlene]

23 hours ago, hedgehog said:

@Major Arlene I hope it is not too late for feedback. I enjoyed your map; I thought it looked good and played well. Combat was a bit hard for my taste, but in small maps I don't mind that so much.

 

There were two things that bothered me:

 

Like @joshthenesnerd I found ammo to be a little on the stingy side, plus I kind of wished I had a more powerful weapon to deal with some of the larger groups of monsters. If you don't want to water down the challenge, perhaps you could at least include an extra weapon and/or some additional ammo in a secret, thus creating an optionally easier way to play through the map. I personally wouldn't have minded a secret rocket launcher, to make fighting the revenants and hell knights a bit less grindy.

 

I also found the way the exit is opened to be very unintuitive and had to replay/reload the level several times before finally figuring out what I needed to do:

  Hide contents

There are two identical computer terminals on either side of the room, neither of which stand out as something the player can interact with, yet both can be activated. The one on the right can be activated to reveal a switch (which as far as I could tell plays no sound, and is very easy to miss) beneath the one on the left, which can in turn be used to open the exit. However (!), you can open the exit simply by activating the computer terminal on the left, before the switch has been revealed.

 

Wouldn't it perhaps make more sense to either have the button visible from the start, or to automatically reveal it once the monsters are killed? Or both: have it visible, but blocked in such a way that the player cannot activate it until the monsters in the final room are killed -- e.g. with a small pillar or something similar that lowers once the fight is over?

 

 

hey, thanks for the feedback!
I may go ahead and add in a RL secret or at least more ammo.
as for the exit.... will probably add an arrow or a blinking light. will also have to fix the switch issue- i didn't quite plan that as great as i should.