[v1.0] Gomorrah - A UDMF mapset powered by OTEX

[Turin Turambar]

Ok finished. When I saw the enemy count to be close to 900, I thought the map would be super big, with several hard fights. It was shorter than that. There were indeed a pair of more interesting fights than before (the Archvile one with imps and knights, and the Cacodemons + Lost Souls in the platform were the best), but surprisingly not a lot else, as most of the enemies are reserved for the final slaughter fight. Which again surprisingly, it was very easy, there are so many enemies and placed in such a way that you don't even need to provoke infighting, they will start to fight by themselves killing the Cyberdemons without you having to do anything. There were too some silly 'filler fights', like a room with a single Baron, or the rooms with two Mancubus.

 

Maybe it's because I'm coming hot from beating Sunlust in the last weeks, but I would say that at least on Hard (which I selected because I believed it was the equivalent to UV, Hard+ had a different color so it seemed Nightmare?), you have to increase the enemy count and overall difficulty. A baron or two Mancubus, in the big spaces you give the player, is nothing. Double their numbers, or even better, try to setup more interesting fights by combining enemy types. Instead of two Mancubus, have two Mancubus and two Revenants, and coming from different directions. Instead of a baron, put and Archvile in the ground and two Barons in columns. Putting enemies at different heights is always a trick that add depth to the combat. It's always hard to make fights interesting in big empty arenas, maybe you should try to add dynamic elements, like pillars that raise and lower height, so they can be used as cover if you time them correctly. Stuff like that.

[RonnieJamesDiner]

Right off the bat, this set has tremendous presentation – from the nice opening menu, to the hub and individual map introductions, to the overall atmosphere. I enjoyed playing through this.

 

It’s very clear that “atmosphere” was priority number one, and for the most part, I think you nailed it. Every level has distinct personality and tone (especially as it relates to colour, which felt like an important motif across the set), and most of the features really came together in this effort. Most notably, the music. Seeing that you created the OST yourself was impressive; the songs fit perfectly, and add a lot of depth to the maps. A case of... if you want something done right, do it yourself, perhaps?

 

General pros:

• The sector art across the set is wonderful, providing a great attention to detail and always something to catch the player’s eye.
• The use of UDMF features were awesome; the polyobject doors, the 3D sectors for bridges, staircases, art detail (and even furniture), the use of linedef portals, and the various scripted events.
• As stated already, the atmosphere was superb, helping each map feel unique – from the music, and choice of textures and colours, to the slower pacing which felt deliberate and almost “creepy”.

General cons:

 

There’s really just two basic grievances I had with the set, one being far easier to address than the other,

 

Spoiler

• Lighting: The majority of the maps (primarily the 3 main skullkey maps), feel incredibly flat at times. It’s as though you deliberately lowered the overall light level everywhere in an effort to make dynamic lights really stand out and do their job, except, there’s very few dynamic lights throughout the set. So, we’re left with rather static and bland looking rooms with low light.

 

I really think that if you spent some time working on the lighting, the result (as far as atmosphere and presentation, as well as simple things like guiding the player and highlighting important/interesting aspects of the levels) would increase in quality tenfold. Especially in a set prioritizing atmosphere, I think you really need to nail the lighting. My suggestions would be to incorporate a bit more variation (stark contrast) in the actual sector lighting, and secondly, don’t be afraid to populate these levels with dynamic lights. I realize that performance and FPS can be a concern, but I think there’s room to at least double (if not triple) the use of dyn lights here.

 

• Layout: Unfortunately, the bulk of these levels suffer from that classic issue of, Door > Room > Door > Room > Door > Room. The trouble with this kind of design, I think, is that it essentially obliterates the “flow” of a level. Everything just sort of feels "disconnected". There’s virtually no interconnectivity here, and exploring one path of a level generally meant having to run back through 10+ doors (and empty rooms) to reach the other main path, and then sometimes, even having to do that trip again back the other direction.

 

Without a willingness on your part to literally dissect these levels and compact them, removing doors and linking things together in more interesting ways across the entire map(s), I think this is probably better served as a learning lesson for future projects. For now, I think a simple way of perhaps addressing this if you wanted, would be to: Remove a few doors, joining some of the rooms, and maybe implement monster closets (or better yet, scripted sequences) of new enemy encounters for players to fight as they loop back through previously visited areas.

 

 

Thoughts on individual maps:

 

Spoiler

MAP01: HUB

- Loved the design here, and it’s very clean and “readable”, which I think was important. I understood almost immediately what the point of each portal was, thanks to the torches.

 

MAP02: Desolation

- A nice, creepy “abandoned facility” feeling.

- The opening cave is incredible.

- Loved the glass walkway / skybridge.

 

- The level is incredibly grey (I think a heavier use of different coloured dyn lights would help a lot).

- Wasn’t sure what the puzzle was, and fumbled my way through it accidentally.

 

MAP03: Malevolence

- An awesome, oppressive atmosphere.

- Sector art was fantastic

- The room with the red skullkey had some of the best architecture in the entire set, in my opinion (gorgeous!).

- Loved the unexpected side-quest into the HR Geiger-esque purple/grey tunnel system (though I wish there had been some kind of reward for going through it).

- I actually managed to figure this puzzle out as intended (with the coloured torches above). A cool idea.

 

MAP04: Nocturne

- Loved the castle/manor concept (probably my favourite map atmospherically)

- Loved the way you constantly show the sky through ceiling slats/windows, maintaining that sense of “space”.

- One of the more compact levels, which helped the “flow” tremendously.

 

- I liked the idea of the puzzle for the yellow skullkey, but it felt way too easy (honestly, you can accidentally solve it faster than it takes to read the “clue” and analyze the 3 textures).

 

MAP05: Gate to Gomorrah

- Absolutely incredible scripted sequence for the skullkey gate, just badass!

- Beautiful architecture and sector art in the giant teleport room.

 

MAP06: Ultima

- Easily one of the strongest maps in the set; the lighting, detail, texture work, and atmosphere are all on point here.

- Really admired that opening portal/void idea, and the puzzle with the Imp fireball was quite creative.

- The fights are genuinely engaging (loved the bridge sequence halfway through).

- Really enjoyed the “theatricality” of reaching the final room and starting the fight, it felt very epic.

- Loved the “trick” of revealing the larger battle after the simple Cyb and Baron fight.

 

- The huge fight at the end needs a bit of work. I started circle-strafing around the large open arena as soon as everything started, and almost a minute later, the 3 Cyberdemons had been killed by infighting, leaving well over 100 Hellknights left with the exit open. I think you could definitely increase the number of Cybs required for the exit here, for starters.

 

[MFG38]

Thanks for the detailed feedback, @RonnieJamesDiner!

 

Addressing the level layouts, I must say that I completely agree with you in regards to them. My process with designing pretty much any map over the past 11 years has been "visualize a room, build it, attach it to the other one", and it's an annoying habit that sticks around to this day. That's why the maps in Gomorrah admittedly don't flow as well as they could, and I absolutely hate myself for only so rarely managing to break out of that formula. Next project I tackle (which I've already been semi-planning), I'll definitely try something new in that regard, though, which will hopefully result in a better-flowing end product as well.

 

Rest assured that all of your criticisms have been taken into account, and I'll do my best to improve upon Gomorrah for whatever the next version is.

 

Also, about Desolation's blue key puzzle (spoilered for obvious reasons):

Spoiler

If you looked at the floor in front of each switch in the puzzle room, you should have seen a Roman numeral in front of each one. Those basically signify the order you have to press them in - simply go from I to IV.

 

[Paperclip_Tank]

I just finished the map on hard. I greatly enjoyed them for the most part in both visuals and puzzles. My only real problem with them was on the red skull puzzle I just had to open up the editor because as a color blind person I honestly couldn't tell the difference in the torches. I was able to get the blue skull key just fine I was able to see the roman numerals on the ground and didn't need to look up a hint for that one. And the yellow skull I just blindly spammed and I got it. I didn't really have any problems with the final levels puzzles and was able to get through both of them no problem.

 

For combat I felt like there was a pretty low amount of ammo early on or just no reason to go to parts of the level. I only fully cleared the red key level and final levels. I only killed ~30 enemies on the yellow key level as I got the key and didn't see any real reason to clear out the rest of the level as I had all the weapons minus the BFG. The final fight also made my computer pretty unhappy and was fairly non interactive. While the reveal of it was really nice I just hid behind the "hill" that was the center platform and level infighting do all the work. I never saw any of the imps / cybers as they were solved by all the knights.

 

Over all I really enjoyed the visuals of the map and they were top notch especially the red key map. I just found that the combat very early on to be super ammo tight and the combat later on to be a lot of circle strafing. The entire run took me 57 minutes on hard mode. 1 hour 17 minutes if you count in failures.

[MFG38]

3 hours ago, Paperclip_Tank said:

My only real problem with them was on the red skull puzzle I just had to open up the editor because as a color blind person I honestly couldn't tell the difference in the torches.

 

Doesn't the current version of GZDoom offer several different color-blind options? I'd imagine there is an option for yellow/green color-blindness (whatever the medical term for that is), which would have helped with that puzzle. Admittedly, though, I didn't take color-blind people into consideration while designing that puzzle, since I'm not color-blind myself, which makes me feel kinda bad in hindsight.

 

3 hours ago, Paperclip_Tank said:

I just found that the combat very early on to be super ammo tight

 

The ammo is intentionally tight in the levels early on, but I did take care to make every map maxable from pistol start. You just sort of need to be careful not to use your resources too generously, and some fights I even encourage to skip initially, depending on which level you enter first. If you entered Malevolence first, for instance, you'd need to ignore the cacodemons in the bridge area just beyond the starting room, since there isn't nearly enough shotgun ammo to kill both them and the imps. But you can still kill the cacos, only you'll have to scrounge up some ammo (and preferably the SSG) first.

 

Other than that, thanks for the feedback!

[seed]

Made a let's play of this today . ^{Sorry for not posting the actual video directly here, but it looks like Twitch has broken embedding with yesterday's overhaul so it errors out immediately once I post it...}

 

I liked this quite a bit, but gotta have to agree with Ronnie on the weak points. The gameplay did feel repetitive as most of it is "go to this room, kill this and that, proceed to the next area", and I would say that the maps are a little underdetailed as well. I mean, they're really large but there's not much going on in them, in fact they look almost sterile. The lighting also makes them a bit more bland than they really should.

 

But apart from these, it was good fun, combat was nice, and I loved the final fight, especially since it tanked my framerate to a crawl when some 800 projectiles armed with fancy dynamic lights started flying around, all at the same time >:D, you'll see.

Edited June 11, 2020 by seed

[IvanDobrovski]

Good visuals for the most part, incredibly boring gameplay. I'll explain:

 

Your main formula is something like this: Rectangular room of varying size + Hallway. You repeat this QUITE a lot it almost feels like something out of Oblige. While the decorations and the sector work in certain parts is quite impressive, they are nothing but simple set pieces. They save no purpose, they just look decent. Some of the advanced stuff like the portal use is clever but I'd really pick better gameplay over those.

 

Gameplay. The combat is absolutely hideous and completely boring. You have a habit of putting 3 monsters together 2 of which is the same type. 2 imps 1 chaingunner, 2 hellknights 1 arachno, 2 lost souls 1 caco... You love 3 don't you? The monsters all feel inorganically placed and sort of just exist there. They felt like an afterthought honestly.

 

Spoiler

And super shotgunning a CYBERDEMON is fun AS HELL. Super shotgunning a Spider Mastermind is even more fun. Thanks for bringing two of my most hated things to life in this mod...

 

Also regarding your puzzles:

 

Spoiler

The puzzle (I think yellow key?) where you have three switches and you need to press on the order of 5 7 and 6 vertices on shapes, if you press them too fast they break. I had trouble getting through it at first thinking my assumption was wrong, read the guide, and it said the same thing. So I did it slower and it worked. Might want to keep that in mind for future.

 

Also a final thing:

Spoiler

The final fight can easily be cheesed by just killing the Cyberdemons, after the monsters collapse to the center it becomes circle strafing. The buildup really wasn't too worth it honestly.

 

I think if you improved only the gameplay this could be great.

[MFG38]

It took a while, but a new version of Gomorrah finally appears - say hello to RC2! Download links in OP have been updated with the new version.

 

Changelog:

Spoiler

MAP02:

• Added more dynamic lights and props.
• Added some detail to a couple areas.

MAP03:

• Added dynamic light highlights to the checkpoint switches.
• Added some dynamic lights.
• Added some ceiling detail to an area.

MAP04:

• Added a few enemies.
• Added more dynamic lights.
• Fixed one of the "golden" portal textures not being translucent.
• Fixed a few wrong textures in places.

MAP05:

• Fixed the exit portal only working once.
• Added a small delay between the last light and the gate opening.

MAP06:

• Fixed a potential breakage in the second puzzle.
• Tweaked the second puzzle.
• Reworked the final battle.

General map changes:

• Minor visual tweaks and texture misalignment fixes.

Misc. changes and bugfixes:

• Added TITLEPIC and BOSSBACK graphics.
• Added GAMEINFO lump.
• Added an override to have MUS_TTL play in the finale cast instead of D_EVIL.
• Removed fast monsters from Hard+ difficulty.

 

[Kachakeño]

I've tested with LZDoom 3.86a. The mapset work without any issue except in Malevolence (map03) which it makes fps drops at certain areas (it's not annoying at all, though). I also tested along with gameplay mods like ZRift and it runs with no compatibility issues, but it can vary the monster's positions so take that in mind.

By the way, I noticed the mapset looks darker when I activate the fog effect on OpenGL renderer settings; if you didn't make it on purpose, try to check it out and fix it if possible.

[MFG38]

17 minutes ago, Kachakeño said:

The mapset work without any issue except in Malevolence (map03) which it makes fps drops at certain areas

 

Yeah, I'm aware of one of the areas in particular in that map being a bit of a framerate dropper. It's something I've experienced during my own test runs as well, dropping the framerate from 100+ FPS to ~45 on GZDoom. Sadly, I'm not sure how I'd go about optimizing it.

 

21 minutes ago, Kachakeño said:

By the way, I noticed the mapset looks darker when I activate the fog effect on OpenGL renderer settings; if you didn't make it on purpose, try to check it out and fix it if possible.

 

Any issues of that sort have certainly not been intentional, but then again, I didn't really design the mapset with LZDoom in mind at all. Not making any promises, but I'll look into it.

[MFG38]

Just over a year after the initial announcement, v1.0 of Gomorrah has just been released! I would like to take the time to thank everyone who played Gomorrah and provided feedback when it was needed - special shoutouts to @Bridgeburner56 and @RonnieJamesDiner for their detailed insight and helping to improve the maps as this project neared this milestone. And thank you in advance to anyone who is going to play Gomorrah in the future!

 

Anyway, download links for v1.0 have been updated in the OP.

 

Changelog:

Spoiler

MAP01:

• Map previews now trigger further away from the portals.

MAP02:

• Replaced one of the shotguns with a SSG.
• Replaced a pair of zombiemen with a shotgunner.
• Rebalanced ammo ever so slightly.
• Added detail to the outdoor walkway area.
• Made a previously monster-blocking line non-blocking.
• Reduced the "stay" time of the entrance elevator.

MAP03:

• Replaced the yellow torches in the puzzle room with white ones.
• Removed a couple of the green armors.
• Replaced some of the health bonuses in the Cyberdemon room with armor bonuses.
• Moved one of the green armors slightly.
• Moved the SSG from the Giger maze to the Cyberdemon room.
• Added a rocket launcher spawn as a reward for completing the Giger maze.
• Removed a Hell Knight.
• Minor automap cleanup.

MAP04:

• Modified the soulsphere room battle so it isn't skippable.
• Moved the soulsphere to the bottom of the blood pool.
• Tweaked sound propagation.
• Fixed a wrong texture.

MAP06:

• Reduced the number of armor bonuses in the portal maze.
• Added a set of bars to prevent the player from escaping the Demon/Cyberdemon battle.
• Removed about 90 monsters from the final battle area.
• Added a backpack.
• Added an invisible 3D floor below the central platform in the Cacodemon/Lost Soul battle area to prevent the enemies from getting under it.

General map changes:

• Added ambient sound cues to the checkpoints.
• Added dynamic lighting and tweaked sector light levels.
• Miscellaneous minor visual tweaks.

Misc. changes and bugfixes:

• Reduced the map preview "hold" and fade-in/out times.

 

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

This looks awesome, will be playing it today. I hope this one doesn't fly under the radar.

[Bridgeburner56]

Enjoyed my play through of this. Very nice spooky atmosphere and definitely brings something different to Doom.