Hi.
First of all I would like to thank everyone who played the v1.0. I hope you had a decent time.
This map was about 1.7 year long effort (it is about 2 years now after the patch) and after getting an amazing feedback from @HAK3180 I decided to update the map and fix (or reduce) the really jaring aspects of it (that is the mosty combat and really low difficulty). But let me start from the beginning.
Hydrologica is map set on a remote base somewhere in the middle of the ocean. Too bad it was overrun by demons, like they do and now your task is to destroy it.
Blowing the thermal reactor should do the trick, you need to get there first.
Design-wise it is a large open map focused on exlporation with multiple routes to progress.
It has some autosave points, so if you have autosave slot limit I recommend making a backup of those first.
Map was tested on GZdoom 3.6.0 (It was built on GZdoom Hexen config)
Jumping and crouching is disabled by default
Freelook is not required (although I do use it)
Map contains from approx 600 - 1200 enemies.
There are 18 secrets in total (3 of which help player to get BFG early), many of them contain weapons or a power up.
Higher difficulties (UV/NM) have extra rooms.
There are branching paths, but they all lead somewhere you probably need to be at some point.
1.1 Patchnotes
Some rooms had been revamped to look better or to improve engagements.
Added few ambient sounds (waves, waterfalls, humming machinery and thomping sounds near the BFG room locks secrets).
Added details to some secret rooms triggers helping players secret hunting, in the case of BFG room secrets, sounds were added instead (as specified earlier).
Added more teleporter trigger lines and teleporter destinations from monster closets to help prevent enemies getting stuck and not teleporting properly.
Added endgame area where player faces enemies from really specific monster closets that hasn´t been activated (helping player get 100% kill count without activating every more route depending encounters).
A lot of block sound triggers had been moved or removed completely.
Killing former mankind enemies (humans, sergeants, chaingunners) now sometimes spawn lost souls or revenents near the area
to divide player attention (mostly in early game).
Killing demon dogs now spawn real (ingame) demons (pinkies/specters).
Added encounters and ambush points. Added some normal difficulty (HMP) specific fights near the keys.
Goodies in some secret rooms had been replaced/rebalanced.
Number of backpacks had been lowered, ammo rebalanced not to max out too early (note that there should be enough ammo to kill everything by doing some exploration).
Amount of healing items (stimpacks, medkits and souls spheres) had been reduced, few berserk power ups added.
Some stimpacks are medkits on the UV+ difficulty (mostly in the early game to slightly compensate for no green armor at the start).
This map version uses updated version of DavidN´s plasma zombie scientist (this version drops cells).
Some glass panels are now "breakable" so that enemies will now attack player (or start infighting, some enemies are weird).
Hard difficulty (UV/NM) arenas had been slightly altered.
1. Ammo spawners are now one use only, but there are more of them and now spawn variety of ammo.
(there is just enough to complete the arena - in case you had no ammo after teleporting)
2. Spider mastermind arena had been revamped (it´s far from perfect, but it is far better than V1.0 was).
3. Blue key arena now has usable switch on the player side instead of shootable one on the opposite platform.
4. Every arena now has a Soul sphere instead of regular healing items.
5. Teleporters placements and enemy count/variety had been slightly rebalanced.
Download:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/lbz8wmoewn8f7o1/Hydrologica_1.1.rar/file
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/g-i/hydrologica
Screenshots: