Tartarus (UDMF / OTEX map for GZDoom) Now on /idgames!

[RonnieJamesDiner]

 

 

 

 

The air chokes with the metallic mist of blood. Unimaginable pillars reach above and below to unseen structures of Hell.
The Gates of Tartarus tower amidst the haunted vapor -- a Stygian fortress guarding the passage to realms beyond.
Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

 

>>>>>>>>>> DOWNLOAD HERE <<<<<<<<<<

 

 

===========================================================

 

Change Log:

Spoiler

// v1.2 //

 

-- Gameplay --

 

- Fixed finale being triggerable multiple times (thank you Bridgeburner56 for discovering this)

- Added a few extra secrets (for a total of 5 now)

- Some minor odds and sods (with visuals as well)

 

============================================================================

 

// v1.1 //

 

-- Visuals --

- Replaced small red switches with their purple variants for easier visibility
- Made the switch for the main lift (hopefully) stand out more
- Fixed flickering light level bug in central arena
- (Hopefully) fixed the rest of the broken subsectors

 

-- Gameplay --

- (Hopefully) fixed the Red Skull switch issue with a MAPINFO compatibility flag (thank you boris for the incredible tip, and thanks
to kaleb. and Demion for reporting this)
- [Blue Key Arena] The large central blood pillar now acts as a lift once it raises, so the player can almost instantly get back up
to the arena if they fall (thank you Aurelius and gez for bringing this to my attention)
- Added the Yellow Skull to what was originally the optional Double Cyberdemon trap on the eastern edge (requiring the red key). 
The yellow key can still be obtained from the Caco-cage arena/trap at the far north of the map, so there's two ways of getting that key
now. I just wanted to make that Duo-Cyb trap actually mean something, and thought this added a nice bit of extra non-linearity.
- Removed Invulnerability Sphere from final arena on HMP (for now)
- Added blocking lines during final arena (player should be trapped in there right proper now)
- Added the missing insta-kill sector special (thank you for spotting this gez, though undoubtedly it meant you died a screaming
miserable death discovering it)
- Added a new secret, and re-positioned one of the Soulsphere secrets
- A few other smaller, incidental tweaks

 

Imporant Info: Doom II IWAD, map01. Format is UDMF, and requires GZDoom (it was tested with version 4.2.4).

 

Recommended Settings: Free mouselook, hardware accelerated rendering, dynamic lights, and standard fog mode. 

 

Gameplay: A 3-key Collector style map. Pretty standard fare, with a heavy emphasis on traps and arenas, and a lite-slaughter finale. This map is intended to be challenging. All monsters/weapons are vanilla.

 

(Note: There are a lot of 3D sectors in this map, not to mention the majority of sidedefs are in view at almost all times. This may or may not lag on less-than-decent computers. I'm not entirely sure. I'm sorry if it does lag for you.)

 

Difficulty Settings: There are only 2 modes, (UV) and (HMP and lower). UV is the intended experience, but the HMP-lower version is there if you're looking for an easier run.

 

This map had several sources of inspiration, but the biggest one were the Nether Fortresses in Minecraft (both visually and mechanically). I always wanted to make a Doom map that had the sensation of finding one of these in the Nether, especially with the idea where the environment is as dangerous as the denizens lurking within. That said, there are no teleports if you fall off any of the ledges into the chasm. Basically: You fall, you die.

 

Screenshots:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Edited January 25, 2020 by RonnieJamesDiner

[elend]

Damn, this is looking wild! Have to try this out.

[Bridgeburner56]

Super sexy looking stuff. If I didn't know better I'd say someone had leaked an age of hell map. 

[nrofl]

this is a style of architecture I dont have the talent to replicate. Will download as soon as I can

 

[Tango]

well shit, this looks absolutely fantastic mate :D

[RonnieJamesDiner]

Thanks guys! Hopefully it's fun to play, as well :D

 

@Bridgeburner56 Thank you sir, that's a huge compliment! I definitely drew inspiration from your work. I'll admit it's incredibly hard to see things like Eviternity, Age of Hell, Elementalism, etc. and not be influenced by particular motifs, especially once OTEX comes into play -- which, in and of itself I'm discovering, has a tendency of making things look about 10x better than they probably are, haha. Ukiro's just a mad genius.

[Mr.Rocket]

Pretty freak'n nice looking man!

Are the chains in the first shot textures or models?

 

Downloading now!

Thanks

[RonnieJamesDiner]

1 hour ago, Mr.Rocket said:

Are the chains in the first shot textures or models?

 

Textures, from OTEX. And thank you!

 

I should've mentioned the influence that Hurt had on this, as well @elend. A lot of the seeds for this map were planted back when I first played your masterpiece. I always loved the way you used height as an imposing force, to really make the player feel sort of... oppressed.

[Aurelius]

This has definitely Hurt written all over it - and I like it. Glad to get into that ominous and imposing atmosphere once again. The map is gorgeous, and very organic in it's structure. I love the asymmetry of it, and OTEX once again shows up as a powerful tool to bring that oppressive black/brown/red combo to the map. Visually I especially liked the spawning floaters under the glowing light in the middle of the big circular room.

Took me roughly 35 minutes to complete. There was very good use of space, and you packed a lot of stuff into relatively small overall framework. On UV the gameplay started out pretty casual and progressed into more challenging fights, most of them arena centered (don't mind that either). Really liked that you could go about the keys in your own preferred order, and the resources were well balanced around that. I got stuck looking for the blue key for quite a while, before noticing the switch next to the elevator. The brown switch texture really blends into the surroundings, but I'd say it was my lack of attention more than anything. But I definitely loved exploring the area, though I was left craving for more secrets (this is the perfect setting for that!).

 

Spoiler

There was one particular instance near the first teleporter where I hugged a narrow edge and hoped to find a secret behind the corner, but there was nothing there :( 

The fights themselves were challenging but not too much so, and I felt that you could always figure out what do without having to die multiple times. Ammo was always plentiful, so I could approach the encounters as I saw fit. Most of the time I was a bit too economic with my ammo, opting for SSG when I could've just used the BFG. Old habits die hard I suppose.

 

Nothing big to gripe about, but here's a few comments:

Spoiler

- In the blue key fight, you could quite easily fall back down to the previous area below. This is all well and good but I couldn't find a quick way to get back up (either I missed it, or it's not there). In any case, I feel that you could use that verticality to your advantage. Either 1. add a second layer to the fight by adding more monsters down below, or make it so that if you happen to fall, the fight follows you down. This is a bit difficult with the Spidey and the limited space, but it could be an interesting thing to explore. Or 2. you could add a teleporter there that takes you back up, maybe inside one of the pillars? This eliminates backtracking.

- This is not a gripe, but after the last big fight (quite a pleasantly sadistic surprise (!), I got a bit lucky by killing most of the archies before anything else came through), the blood pool with the deep water effect had this strange flickering of two light levels, possibly somehow linked to the sector that was raised/lowered from that spot.

 

- Some of the small red switches were really hard to spot from all the other red stuff. You could maybe opt for another color, if it happens to fit the theme of the map otherwise? This is not a big deal as I found them eventually, but highlighting them would improve the flow on a few occasions.

 

All in all a solid map, very much enjoyed playing it! Will definitely look into more of your stuff at a later time.

Edited December 3, 2019 by Aurelius : Fixed some typos.

[RonnieJamesDiner]

@Aurelius Thank you so much for the kind words, I'm relieved to hear you had a pleasant experience!

 

I was very close to swapping out the small red switches with their purple variants, so they'd stand out better -- I didn't and probably should have, will do so. I'll also make the elevator switch a little more noticeable (I can definitely see how it would blend in and disappear, the entire map is literally 3 colors). The blue key arena up top was my biggest struggle -- to clarify, no there's no easy/quick way back up if you fall, it means literally running all the way back to that lift and back across the top platforms... which sucks when I think about it now. I actually love the idea of the fight following you down if you do fall (despite this not really working with a SM); either way, I really want to address that issue with the next update. I'll definitely look into that flickering light level in the blood pool as well, thanks for spotting that one!

 

    

[ketmar]

looks fantastic! sadly, i cannot say anything about gameplay, because on my potato it is barely playable at 10-18 FPS. ;-)

[MFG38]

Goddamn, that's looking sexy! Just downloaded, will hopefully find the time to stream a playthrough of this someday next week. c:

[RonnieJamesDiner]

9 hours ago, ketmar said:

looks fantastic! sadly, i cannot say anything about gameplay, because on my potato it is barely playable at 10-18 FPS. ;-)

 

Awe, I'm sorry about that. I considered a less taxing version, but it just wouldn't be the same map anymore. I appreciate the thought! 

 

 

@MFG38 Thank you, sir! Definitely looking forward to that stream :)

[ketmar]

14 minutes ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

Awe, I'm sorry about that.

ah, it's not your fault in any way. besides, it is fun to simply fly around with frozen monsters. ;-)

[kaleb.]

i really like it so far but, got the blue and yellow key, but at the part where there is a red skull on top of a pillar with a button on it, but pushing the button doesnt do anything at all :\

 

looked at the map in doombuilder but it looks like it should just work but it....doesnt

[RonnieJamesDiner]

42 minutes ago, kaleb. said:

got the blue and yellow key, but at the part where there is a red skull on top of a pillar with a button on it, but pushing the button doesnt do anything at all :\

 

Hmm... I'm trying to replicate the issue but I can't seem to, regardless of which order I collect the keys. That's a peculiar one, I'm sorry to hear it's bugging out on you like that. As unfortunate as it is, perhaps you may have to try restarting the map from the beginning? See if it still happens.

 

Just to be clear, you're talking about this button, right?

Spoiler

 

[kaleb.]

yea that button. guess just something weird messed up and just decided to not work.

[RonnieJamesDiner]

@kaleb. What version of GZDoom are you running?

[kaleb.]

1 minute ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

@kaleb. What version of GZDoom are you running?

newest one, 4.2.4

[RonnieJamesDiner]

That's a head scratcher! I'd say try restarting, and if at all possible you could record the playthrough that would be super helpful, too, just to see how you're progressing through it in detail. If it persists I'll see what I can figure out, but as of this point I'm really not sure unfortunately :\

[JDR]

The vertical scale of this really makes it special. I liked the visuals: detailing really is on point, nothing busy and then texture theme had came together nicely. I typically don't bother to check gzdoom wads, but the effects there were quite nice, mostly it's some of the dynamic lighting glow and freelook that annoys me. Combat formula is pretty tight too. Very much appreciate that those two secrets weren't a trouble to find. Overall pretty cool map.

Are those huge banners part of OTEX too? I'd figure they'd be pretty hard to use without the intention of player having freelook, but those are wonderful.

[RonnieJamesDiner]

@JDR Thanks for checking this out, and for the warm review! Freelook can definitely be an issue in classic Doom if it's something you're not used to or comfortable with. I'm just glad to hear you still enjoyed it. And yes, those large skull banners are a part of OTEX. If I'm remember correctly right now, they're 512 units* tall -- which I agree is pretty nuts! They certainly need to be used carefully if you're mapping in a format that can't rely on free mouselook to show them off for you.

 

*I'm not sure if "units" is the correct term there, honestly.

[boris]

Pretty cool map.  Here, have a video of me stumbling about.

 

 

Unfortunately I forgot to enable audio recording, so it's silent :(

[RonnieJamesDiner]

@boris

 

Save Game > New Game > FARTARUS. Lmao, that got me good. YOU TRYNA SAY SOMETHIN', BORIS?? That was awesome to watch, thanks for the demo! That was really helpful for fine tuning. I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the experience. It was nice seeing a HMP playthrough as well, I was really unsure how it would play (I wanted it to be easier of course, but hopefully it was still fun and engaging). Looked like you made short work of that final arena, and the Invul was a little overkill.

 

7 hours ago, boris said:

Unfortunately I forgot to enable audio recording, so it's silent :(

 

This was quite alright, I just threw some music on and enjoyed it just as much (possibly more that way, honestly!) Thanks again, cheers! 

[Demion]

Great map so far, but i got stuck. The same issue that happened to kaleb. The switch for red key doesn't work for me either :(

[RonnieJamesDiner]

23 minutes ago, Demion said:

Great map so far, but i got stuck. The same issue that happened to kaleb. The switch for red key doesn't work for me either :(

 

Well damn... that's not good to hear! I'm still at a complete loss on what's happening here, which pains me to say. For some clarification, does the switch "activiate" (as in, it plays the sound and changes textures), but nothing happens afterwards? Or is it just not activating whatsoever? (Like you're dry-humping a wall). 

[kaleb.]

for me it was just doing nothing at all when i pressed.

 

doing "puke 16" in the console to manually activate the script is what i ended up doing as a workaround

[Demion]

2 minutes ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

 

Well damn... that's not good to hear! I'm still at a complete loss on what's happening here, which pains me to say. For some clarification, does the switch "activiate" (as in, it plays the sound and changes textures), but nothing happens afterwards? Or is it just not activating whatsoever? (Like you're dry-humping a wall). 

Nothing happens. Not a sound or a texture change.

4 minutes ago, kaleb. said:

for me it was just doing nothing at all when i pressed.

 

doing "puke 16" in the console to manually activate the script is what i ended up doing as a workaround

Great, I will try that. Thank you.

[RonnieJamesDiner]

10 minutes ago, kaleb. said:

doing "puke 16" in the console to manually activate the script is what i ended up doing as a workaround

 

I was totally unaware of that feature, that's fantastic. Thank you! I'm happy there's at least that work around for now, while I figure this out. Sorry for the inconvenience guys. 

[kaleb.]

Just now, RonnieJamesDiner said:

 

I was totally unaware of that feature, that's fantastic. Thank you! I'm happy there's at least that work around for now, while I figure this out. Sorry for the inconvenience guys. 

its no problem, its a really nice map. ive looked over it in doombuilder and i just cant for the life of me find out what the issue is