Cubic Worlds (WIP) - a mapset for Eternity with original music - 7 maps done!

[stewboy]

This is my Eternity project where I make whatever weird maps I feel like making and put in whatever weird music I feel like writing at the time because nobody can tell me otherwise. Each map is independent and should be done from pistol start, though I haven't figured out how to force that on the player yet. Contains a bunch of new monsters and one new weapon (all taken from various sources, nothing original yet.)

Progress is fairly slow on it, so I'm releasing each map as it's done.

 

 

(30/08): MAP05 and its music are done, link below!

(24/09): fixed a couple bugs here and there

(12/10): MAP06 and its music are done, link below!

(13/10): made a couple tiny changes

(7/04/21): MAP07 and its music are done, link below!

 

Screenshots (one from each map):

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DOWNLOAD
 

 

Just drag and drop the .zip onto Eternity.exe, all textures are included.

Although I've been testing using a dev build of Eternity, this should work on any version 4.01.00 or later (here's the 4.02.00 release thread.)

Edited April 7, 2021 by stewboy

[Mischings]

Your wad looks very good from the screenshots! It seems very open, which is to be expected from a 1024x1024x1024 map anymay, but well made as well! And from what I've seen from the 1st image, it looks like you can even go through the vents, which is not something I ever heard of before. This map appears to be very fun! Might try it later.

[esselfortium]

Woah, this was great! While playing I didn't even remember it was a 1024 map until I came back to this thread to post about it. :)

 

I love all the little nooks and perches you included in this. That yellow key placement was insanely cool. Great work!

[ptoing]

Pretty cool map, looks very nice and has a lot of atmosphere. Claustrophobic, but that works in its favour here.

I had a bit of an issue with resources on HMP, was running out of ammo quite a few times. But I guess that might be intentional.

Overall very enjoyable though, and nice to see people do something for EE :)

[stewboy]

MAP02 done, plus a new midi for MAP01 - link in original post!

[skillsaw]

Fun maps. I got a pleasant sense of disorientation navigating the passages that twist and turn around (and above and below!) themselves. It feels a lot like Gray Dwarf or One Flew Over the Reindeer's Nest, just on a smaller, 1024 scale.

 

On MAP02 I did manage to get an Arachnotron on a catwalk stuck (shooting him with the shotgun a few times pushed him partway over the edge of the catwalk.. some monster blocking lines should do the trick).

 

I'm looking forward to more!

[stewboy]

Thank you! I will fix that poor arachnotron.

I've been posting WIP screenshots in the screenshot megathread but I thought I would put some teasers here to show off the three other maps that I'm furthest along with.

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

I'm trying to make each map have its own 'theme' - if anyone here ever played my old Destination Unknown wad on zandro or zdaemon, it'll kind of be along those lines. I also generally work on the music and the map at the same time, and I try and make both evolve to fit each other.

[stewboy]

MAP03 is done - link in the first post!

[stewboy]

MAP04 is done - link in the first post!

[stewboy]

MAP05 is done - link in the first post!

[stewboy]

MAP06 is done - link in the first post! Have a go at it if you want to fight some cute baby cacodemons.

[4MaTC]

Very interesting idea, i would participate if it was community project.

Downloading, gonna try it asap.

[taufan99]

This is pretty great! Exactly gives what Eternity deserves; more love and great stuff for exposure.

[skillsaw]

Just played through the latest version (maps03-06). Here are my thoughts.

 

Rig

This map was fantastic, absolutely a highlight. I loved the music, too (as usual). It's a great adventure map -- as soon as I saw rockets and items strewn about the snowfield (and thus knew that it would be accessible later), it conveyed the 'escape' narrative of the level.

 

The layout is great, particularly the use of portals to build a 3d space... I was really impressed with how effortlessly the layout weaves above, below, and inside the rig. Finding shortcuts and getting previews of areas I'd go to later was awesome. This is the kind of layout that anyone who is curious about what EE/Linked portals can do should check out... just great stuff. Also, the escape ending was really cool. I love the visual of doomguy escaping onto the empty snowfield -- again, just felt like this map had a well executed narrative/adventure to it.

 

Minor nitpicks..

• I did get really confused after finding the BK -- took me a while to figure out I had to go back to the start and find the RK area from there.
• In the red area, there are some monsters standing on crates you can lock in place if you shoot them partway over the edges.
• There are some small, red ceiling light sprites... they look like they float in the air to me (maybe they need a Y-offset adjustment?)
• The midtex bars where you get the RK block hitscan shots for some reason, maybe this is intentional though (seemed weird to me)
• After getting the RK and BK, he yellow area felt empty ... mostly because I was able to snipe a lot of the enemies in there before gaining access
• You can leave the map without killing the big bad at the end (just walk around behind the exit hole and go in, even if the bars are raised still)

Temple

Another nice adventure map that was fun to explore. Layout is clever again, I suspect no matter where you go it takes you to one of the keys, even though it's very nonlinear and open...

 

I thought it was weird when I found two pinkies just before exiting the map (since every other monster is skull themed!). I also thought it was strange that the lava wasn't damaging.

 

Knee Deep

Pretty nice map, very easy but still fun. It kind of suffers from the same thing Knee Deep in the Dead does, meaning, once you get the chaingun it's basically impossible to die. I liked the blue keycard ambush.

 

I wasn't able to exit, though...  I couldn't figure out where to go once I had all the keys. Maybe I missed something obvious?

 

Toy

Don't really want to spoil anything here, this map is cute as hell -- I liked it a lot. The color coordination is clever.

 

Ammo and health both felt really low to me, though... I savescummed quite a bit to get through this on HMP (maybe I'm just bad though).

[stewboy]

Thanks, skillsaw! I'm glad you liked it :)

I'll try and fix the issues in MAP03. I don't know what I can do to further help the player understand they need to return to the start after getting the BK - I guess I'm depending on them already having noticed the RK area.

The lava in MAP04 was never meant to be damaging, just another kind of floor - which maybe makes lava a weird choice. I'll try a different liquid.

In MAP05 the skull switches are right at the beginning - I'll put them up the initial stairs though so you're more likely to run into them.
And I'll put more stuff in MAP06. I guess because I was so used to how the map worked, I wasn't finding it very difficult. Gameplay has never really been my focus, I just like creating weird rooms that connect to more weird rooms. But I guess gameplay is still important to make it fun to play through!

 

Here's a couple very-WIP screenshots of MAP07 as well!

Spoiler

 

[ABearInThaWoods]

Ive only had a chance to play Map01 so far and i didnt even 100% it but this is an intense and extremely interesting concept. I absolutely love the cramped nature of the map, its like fighting your way through a demon infested ball pit at the local pizza place. It makes the enemy selection so much more intimidating, especially Revenants, knowing you have nowhere to go. Being deprived of the SSG was a very good choice, it brings an additional level of panic knowing you dont get to have that.

 

I'm going to keep playing through the wad as i get time. I will need to play Map01 again anyway to get a solid 100% recording. Wild idea executed brilliantly. 

[Spectre01]

Which compatibility flag setup is recommended for this? I assume it's the default one with infinite height off etc.

[stewboy]

I'm assuming the default one too. I've never actually personally changed any of the compability flags - it should work fine on a clean install of Eternity, so whatever the defaults are I guess.

[airman506]

Just finished playing through this...

 

The rig map and temple map were definitely the highlights for me. The midi for the rig map was great. The environments where good. The way everything connects together with portals is really cool and feels right. I also thought the ending portal to the temple map was really cool. It took me longer than I'd like to admit to realise the sludge area of the knee deep map was connected to itself (I was running in circles).

 

I usually stick to vanilla and boom stuff most of the time. This is my first time actually using Eternity and its portals to do 3D. So this was something different - but I liked it!

 

I did notice some small performance drops on some areas of the larger maps. For example the top level starting area of the rig map. Presumably this is because of the portals combined with the complexity of the maps.

[stewboy]

5 hours ago, airman506 said:

I did notice some small performance drops on some areas of the larger maps. For example the top level starting area of the rig map. Presumably this is because of the portals combined with the complexity of the maps.

Yeah, that'll be unavoidable unfortunately, I just can't seem to resist constantly adding more portals everywhere. Thanks for playing it though, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

A brief update on how this project is going - MAP07 is done, but I want to wait until I've done the music for it before putting it here. Here's a screenshot though!

Spoiler

 

[stewboy]

MAP07 is done - link in the first post!

[skillsaw]

Another cool map... I had fun! here are some disorganized impressions:

• Plasma zombies are really dangerous in tight areas (in particular, I got a few stuck in the long mechanical vent at one point.... waaay too far for me to autoaim at, that was scary)
• Map is quite a bit larger than I expected (mostly because I saw 115 monsters - lots of things spawn in though)
• Again, I love the way is woven together vertically, you reuse the space really effectively. Initially it's challenging to navigate but itt's fun to figure out how each disparate area connects.
• I felt pretty lost after grabbing the RK, but kind of dumb-lucked my way into falling back to the RK switch that raises the stairs by the map start. 
• The dropdown after the YK (where you're supposed to land on the platform with all the revs) is really easy to screw up, and if you do, you need to navigate back around and climb up to the top of the map again, which was a little annoying... I wonder if it can be made a little more obvious where you need to land?
• The barrier in the screenshot attached looks like it is supposed to lock you into the fight, but you can just walk around it.
• The pit in the other screenshot attached is mandatory progression, and once the bars around it and the switch disappear, it's hard to find. Maybe put some lights in/around it?

[stewboy]

59 minutes ago, skillsaw said:

The dropdown after the YK (where you're supposed to land on the platform with all the revs) is really easy to screw up, and if you do, you need to navigate back around and climb up to the top of the map again, which was a little annoying... I wonder if it can be made a little more obvious where you need to land?

There's a couple YK-triggered lifts that take you to the required level to avoid having to go all the way to the top again - I'll make them a bit more obvious, so you're more likely to spot them as you go and think back to them later on.

Re: knowing where to go after grabbing a key, it's becoming a bit of a running theme in these maps that there's a couple paths at the start of the map to go to each key, but it doesn't seem clear enough that you need to then go back to the start and pick the other path. I'll try a different way of indicating this.

I've reuploaded the zip to fix these things, thanks!