Hell Frontier. WIP megawad for Doom 2. [Development thread: Episode 3 progress 7/???] - New MAP30 (update 17.03.2024)

[ViolentBeetle]

This is a development thread where I will post individual maps. Maps from 1 to 20 are already on idgames, and now I am working on episode 3, that would have uncertain number of maps and probably a secret map (With secret exit will be added to MAP15 in final release)

 

The port it was primarily tested is DSDA Doom on complevel 2. GZ Doom should work fine. Chocolate Doom will crash. No vertical aim and especially no jumping allowed. WAD contains DEHACKED lump for map names and intermission as well as replaces Demos which should play on anything that is Doom 2 compatible (That is, presumably anything that is not GZ Doom).

 

EPISODE 1 AND 2 ON IDGAMES

 

 

EPISODE 3 PROGRESS:

MAP21: Beatrice Beachhead

MAP22: Negative Space

MAP23: For Their Deeds Were Evil

MAP24: Blood Drive

MAP25: Enter the Murdercube!

MAP28: Visceral Reality

MAP30: Broken Sky

 

>>>GET CURRENT E3 BUILD HERE<<<

 

 

 

The story so far:

Spoiler

After you have trashed Hell so many times, it went dormant and the UAC has decided to colonize it and main it for resources. You warned them that Hell is not truly dead, but they didn't listen. Now hearing rumours of demonic corruption you fear the worse and go in to investigate.

 

Level list (To see what you tried before)

Spoiler

MAP01: Special Deliverance (Formerly known as Bad Reception)

MAP02: Crate Expectations

MAP03: Checkpoint Charon

MAP04: Bridge World

MAP05: Flesh Mines

MAP06: Deeply and Greedily

MAP07: Orphean Operations

MAP08: Fright Depot

MAP09: Acid Trip

MAP10: Beheadequarters

MAP11: Folie a Deux

MAP12: Avernus Antenna Array

MAP13: Dead Reckoning

MAP14: Dis Topia

MAP15: Final Detonation

MAP16: Nerve Center

MAP17: Brimstown

MAP18: Wages of Sin

MAP19: Mt. Dismal

MAP20: Exit Wound

 

Screenshots (Might be slightly out of date):

Spoiler

 

Credits:

Spoiler

All maps are made by me, using Doom 2 resources.

 

Music:

MAP01: "Ghost Town" by Stuart Rynn (stewboy) (MAP12 of Resurgence)

MAP02: Level 1 music from Cyril Cyberpunk, sequenced by Zero Prophet (Taken from www.vgmusic.com)

MAP03: Ghosts in the Walls by Stuart Rynn (stewboy)

MAP04: Aorta by Eris Falling

MAP05: Cyberpassage by Jimmy

MAP06: Dark Halls from original Doom

MAP07: Hate Machine by Jimmy (E5M1 from SIGIL)

MAP08: Alien Jungle by Stewboy

MAP09: Silicon Dust by Jimmy

MAP10: First Time for Everything by Crunchynut44

MAP11: Ghostgrinder by Jimmy

Intermission: Quell the Beast by Jimmy (E5M3 from SIGIL)

Textcreen: Zombieman Blues by Fookerton and Tiddles

 

Skybox is from Mek's box of skies. It's been cropped.

 

 

 

Special thanks to everyone who supported me morally and provided feedback, Such as Austinado, HAK3180, Clippy, Raiva, Jark and annonymous users from /vr/ board.

 

 

 

Edited March 17 by ViolentBeetle : forgot music credits

[Killerratte]

Very nice, can't wait to try them out again. I was the "door guy" on /vr/ who helped you with Bad Reception and other maps. Also I don't know if you spotted my post from 2 days ago, but seeing your mapping progress was very useful.

 

 

Will probably report back later when I've played through the whole thing. You might wanna check out my wad too, if you like.

[ViolentBeetle]

14 minutes ago, Killerratte said:

Very nice, can't wait to try them out again. I was the "door guy" on /vr/ who helped you with Bad Reception and other maps. Also I don't know if you spotted my post from 2 days ago, but seeing your mapping progress was very useful.

 

 

Will probably report back later when I've played through the whole thing. You might wanna check out my wad too, if you like.

I saw it but wasn't able to reply at the time. Glad to see someone got encouraged.

[4MaTC]

Ehem...Quarantine is boring, so yesterday i've decided to start recording doom gameplay.

Here is my playthrough map01:

https://youtu.be/vFVCS8sFSCk

(im still trying to figure out why OBS omits first seconds of video, so sorry about that)

 

Map is solid, compact and well packed with a pinch of claustrophobia (i could swear i hit my head with computer hanging from ceiling on 1:15) and quite a challenge on UV, but not too hard. Lightning effects are very nice. Only one frustrating thing is doors: you open you wait you open wait. Too many of them on a little space.

 

Didn't find all the secrets, otherwise poking all the walls video would be too long.

 

If video playthrough helps i will continue

[ViolentBeetle]

4 hours ago, 4MaTC said:

Ehem...Quarantine is boring, so yesterday i've decided to start recording doom gameplay.

Here is my playthrough map01:

https://youtu.be/vFVCS8sFSCk

(im still trying to figure out why OBS omits first seconds of video, so sorry about that)

 

Map is solid, compact and well packed with a pinch of claustrophobia (i could swear i hit my head with computer hanging from ceiling on 1:15) and quite a challenge on UV, but not too hard. Lightning effects are very nice. Only one frustrating thing is doors: you open you wait you open wait. Too many of them on a little space.

 

Didn't find all the secrets, otherwise poking all the walls video would be too long.

 

If video playthrough helps i will continue

All feedback is helpful, although your use of vertical aiming might mess up later maps, such as 4, 5 and 7 which are not designed with this in mind.

 

4 hours ago, 4MaTC said:

(i could swear i hit my head with computer hanging from ceiling on 1:15)

I actually checked and it is exactly as tall as the doomguy, can probably give such an impression, but won't obstruct you in any way.

Edited July 16, 2020 by ViolentBeetle

[Killerratte]

Map01 - Same as when I tested it before, good map. I wonder though, did you increase the amount of monsters in the inner yard?

 

Map02 - Loved this map back when I first played it. Note that I found a texture problem as seen in the screenshot.

 

 

Map03 - The eyes in the wall thing, could you somehow use a switch texture here it, so it closes the eyes when you press them, it's just a minor thing.

 

Map04 - I'd get permabanned on this forum if I'd try to write any comments about it.

Map05 - It's a good map up till I got STUCK, but the difficulty is completely upside down here. Right when you pick up the BFG you get swarmed by tons of hitscanners and Revenants and an Archvile and they completely fuck you up while you try to run out. Even BEFORE that you get an Archivile spawned behind you and if the plasma stunlock doesn't work you're already screwed. Then after you beat that entire part the map is suddenly way easier. I mean right after you leave that room you're faced with three lousy hell knights and after that some Cacos and then you encounter a bunch of Imps & Chaingunners, clustered together, where you're able to easily take cover. I mean that really doesn't scale well at all until you come to the blood floor room.

 

 

Also I couldn't continue after I cleared the red blood room. At first I was wondering if it's a broken trigger. I looked into Doom Builder to see how it's working. Turns out that a monster got stuck when I hit the switch, (and that monster seemed to be a Spectre), causing the floor movement to stop, as demonstrated by my screenshot with a spider.

 

 

I had to stop playing after that, or I'd start smashing my keyboard. I got filtered too hard.

Edited July 17, 2020 by Killerratte

[ViolentBeetle]

1 minute ago, Killerratte said:

ausing the floor movement to stop, as demonstrated by my screenshot with a spider.

Hm, shouldn't it resume once you kill the spider though?

[Killerratte]

Nope, doesn't move. Try it for yourself. Idclip over there and try hitting the switch while she stands under the bars.

 

[ViolentBeetle]

4 minutes ago, Killerratte said:

Nope, doesn't move. Try it for yourself. Idclip over there and try hitting the switch while she stands under the bars.

 

Yeah, weird. Going to need a better mechanism.

[ViolentBeetle]

A mid-update change log based on feedback so far:

• MAP02: Rocket launcher is moved out of the secret and into the main area. Additional ammo provided. Switch to lower the really big lift is lit up to draw attention.
• MAP03: A few obstacles removed and pick-ups reshuffled to not be mandatory anymore.
• MAP04: No more specters in dark areas. That was a bad idea. The number of teleporting revenants is reduced significantly, added a few teleporting imps instead. Might remove teleporting imps later as well.
• MAP05: Removed potentially bug-inducing bars. There's no real reason to keep you from jumping back into the pool of blood.
• MAP07: Removed soul sphere being fed to a voodoo doll for being unreliable, compensated by adding more medkits into the arena. Removed some ammo and shell pickups for being way more than necessary.

Those changes are not yet in the upload, just keeping you in the loop. And shamelessly bumping my own thread.

[ViolentBeetle]

I have set myself an arbitrary deadline of September 1st when I will upload the final version on Episode 1 on idgames. Until then I will finish working on tweaks.

 

I am also now started working on further maps that will be included in "Episode 2" pack, starting with MAP10: Beheadquarters. The wad contains stand-alone level in 10th slot.

Edited August 3, 2020 by ViolentBeetle : Probably no reason to not add link here as well, for ease to find.

[ViolentBeetle]

This is the final-final pre-release version of Hell Frontier. Not much has changed since the ones in the opening, but overall it's more generous, with more health and ammo pickups. This will likely be the one uploaded on ID Games, maybe a little cleaned of superflous skies.

 

This is your last chance to have an opinion on it.

hell_frontier_prerelease.rar

[ViolentBeetle]

After a sleepless night of balancing, here it is: MAP11: Foile a Deux. The last map on Earth and the second map ready for "Episode 2". Load it with main wad for sky and crates.

 

 

hf11.rar

[ViolentBeetle]

Another map for Episode 2 is ready for testing. This time it's MAP08. Not decided on the name yet.

Please refer to the next post for link, I deleted this one.

 

 

 

Edited September 23, 2020 by ViolentBeetle

[ViolentBeetle]

Slight update for the same map. I would delete my previous version, but I posted link in some places and don't want it to be gone entirely.

Fixed missing type on some floors that should be damaging.

Expanded windows on wooden gallery and moved blue door to make it a less lucrative camping spot.

Made lift go both way, but locked until you reach the bottom from elsewhere.

Replaced some imps with cacos to make them not get lost under the ledge.

Removed Arch-Viles from the last monster pack.

hf08v2.rar

Edited September 21, 2020 by ViolentBeetle

[ViolentBeetle]

Just wanted to update and bump, guys. After @Bridgeburner56 played through my wad, I'm pretty confident about it, just going to incorporate some of his suggestions before loading the final version on idgames. Finally.

[ViolentBeetle]

I am still working on it, but took a break for Hellevator. I've done another revision going by @Bridgeburner56 and after one last round of testing, I will finally be done with those seven maps I promise. The latest set of tests were conducted in PrBoom+ complevel 2.

 

Download link

Edited December 3, 2020 by ViolentBeetle

[ViolentBeetle]

MAP09: Acid Trip.

Now I actually have 11 maps and might have a more logical episode. But I would need to rebalance the other 3 maps and not sure I have patience necessary.

hf09.rar

[ChopBlock223]

Might have to give this a look, Map 02's name is fantastic btw.

[Caleb13]

Very nice work and clever map design, I'm really looking forward to the future maps! In the meantime, I tried "hell_frontier_3009.wad" on UV in GZdoom 4.5.0 and I noticed some problems:

 

-MAP01: it wouldn't hurt to move the EXIT sign to a more visible place.

 

-MAP02: several monsters didn't teleport out of sector 659 because they're deaf (thus 100% kills is impossible).

 

-MAP04: small HOM (or maybe unclosed sector) at the bottom of door sector 345, the door need to be open and you need to look from the east to see it.

 

-MAP05: cacodemon 61 can't teleport out, 100% kills is impossible.

 

-MAP07: this one could use more rockets and/or cells. I got unlucky with the last batch of archviles, they resurrected too many tough monsters before I could dispatch them. I had to snipe the last one (and the monsters it kept resurrecting) with chaingun, even though I had lots of ammo from previous maps. MAP07 is also suddenly much harder than the others, particularly the blue key arena.

[ViolentBeetle]

@Caleb13 Thanks for reporting. I will take a look at MAP04 and MAP05. Will think on MAP01 too.

The rest I actually changed already, just didn't release yet.

[Caleb13]

Oh, one more thing, the intermission text is cut off. I deliberately play on oldschool 1024x768 resolution and this seems to happen in other mods too, lately - maybe it's caused by recent GZdoom changes, but I'm not sure.

[ViolentBeetle]

Yeah, I tested it primarily in Crispy Doom and it breaks lines by default. I only recently discovered that other ports do not and I'll have to break them manually. Pretty annoying.

[ChopBlock223]

I guess that makes it a "Crispyism" then?

[fabian]

It only breaks lines if they exceed Vanilla's horizontal resolution. The alternative would be to stop printing altogether at that point. 

[ViolentBeetle]

9 minutes ago, fabian said:

It only breaks lines if they exceed Vanilla's horizontal resolution. The alternative would be to stop printing altogether at that point. 

Yeah, there's no issue with Crispy Doom, problem is with everyone else not doing that. (I think gzDoom also did it for me, could be compatibility setting). Regardless I'll make time to break the lines to fit.

[ViolentBeetle]

The wad is now officially an 11-maps episode replacement. I've been balancing this the whole night and now it's much tighter.

Major overhaul's been done on maps 8, 10 and 11. Map 5 now has a death exit.

This will hopefully be the final beta for this map set.

 

Please refer to the opening post for the wad.

[ViolentBeetle]

Following several days of testing I've balanced it some more. The version has been updated.

[ViolentBeetle]

A small balancing update as I did some more testing. Mostly rebalancing of MAP10 with new sound blocking lines and slightly more ammo for the big courtyard fight.

 

The wad also now supports co-op on every level.

[ViolentBeetle]

Release candidate for episode 1 now uploaded. It might be the final version.

 

Important changes:

- Restored a wall that went missing on MAP02 as well as some other geometry on the upper terrace

- Added a wall in red key room on MAP04 to help avoid the arch-vile during the fight for the key.