DBP26: The City of Damned Children

[Gez]

FTURMIL.MID's title is "Future Military Conquests", BTW.

 

Title nitpicks, continued: for MAP07 I still say drop the uppercase from the article ("À l'Intérieur"); for MAP10 it shouldn't be a question mark, since it's an order ("choose your side, comrade!") not a question.

[Big Ol Billy]

Thanks, we’ll get to perfect French in the end, promise! This is what they get for having an American leading the project...

[NotSoHazy]

Which film is being referred to?

[Catpho]

@NotSoHazy A French film called La cité des enfants perdus. @Big Ol Billy can fill you in on the details :)

[Big Ol Billy]

Yep, the 1995 film by Jeunet and Caro, known in English as The City of Lost Children. Jeunet and Caro also made the fairly well-known Delicatessen, and Jeunet went on to direct a number of well-known films including Amelie and Alien Resurrection.

 

The film is especially influential in codifying many of the elements of the modern "steampunk" aesthetic that you apparently find in games like Bioshock and Dishonored, although the film is well worth watching even if the term steampunk puts you off. Since the film is driven somewhat more by style and imagery rather than plot, it felt natural to use it as a loose source of inspiration rather than trying too much to make the project consistent with the film's world and story. So fans of the film will run across a number of visual references and homages, but they'll also see things from the film flipped, rearranged, recontextualized, omitted, etc. This hopefully means that people who haven't seen the film (of whom there are probably many) shouldn't ultimately be missing out on anything too important when they play the WAD. The world and story here, for those who care about that stuff, is supposed to be essentially self-contained. Apologies if we were perhaps too allusive in the write-up! I wanted to be just a little indirect in hopes of not dissuading non-fans of the film from checking it out.

Edited August 6, 2020 by Big Ol Billy

[Veinen]

This is a really awesome mapset. Not familiar with the movie but I love the aesthetics and atmosphere you've created. Those gritty Doom64 assets are a very good fit with this style too. 

 

FDAs for RC2 attached, recorded with glboom+ on UV. Some of the bigger maps took around 20 minutes to finish, partly because I got lost a couple of times but mostly because they are pretty sprawling maps with lots of nooks and crannies to explore and color coded doors aren't exactly bright (this is not a complaint though, just an observation!). I think I died only once though, in the very last battle of the entire set.

 

FDA_DBP26_01-11.zip

[TheOrganGrinder]

Some overall thoughts...

 

MAP01's scale, complexity, and relative difficulty are all bold choices for the opening level of the WAD, especially when somewhere between a half and two-thirds of the carefully sculpted and functional layout is inaccessible here - what might be dismissed as an excessively lavish backdrop at first glance becomes the playable space in which subsequent levels (MAP05 and MAP11) take place, although the isolation of the former and the elevation of the latter might make it difficult to discern exactly where within the repeated layout those episodes take place.  Playing in ZDoom I experienced a little bit of chug when looking in certain directions; that and figuring out the subtle quirks of the modified bestiary (invisible imps, tiny chaingun-toting spiders) made this level a none-too-gentle introduction to the project for me.

 

MAP04 is probably my favourite level out of the set, and it and MAP08 feel like the most self-contained and perhaps the most conventional of the maps on offer here.  The textures are wonderfully grainy in a way that contributes to the sense of grime and technological primitivism pervading the environment - Doom's vision of high technology has always been a somewhat blocky and clunky one, but it's taken to another level here, with its grinding gears and oversized mechanisms and the commingling of urban and industrial almost as though the two are at war.  I don't think the WAD offers a definitive answer as to which of those two elements is winning, or indeed which is the "base layer" or original substance and which represents an invading force, an intrusion or an infection - is this an urban environment through which the towers and factories and stinking, shuddering mechanisms of industrial progress have torn like claws, or is it an industrial environment around and throughout which the shivering proletariat have clustered and built their hovels, drawn inexorably and by necessity into the wheels of the very industrial machine that grinds upon them so relentlessly?  The player can afford to consider those philosophical questions from a somewhat removed perspective, since they're not tasked with identifying and addressing the fundamental inequalities of this society - their mission is a much more straightforward one, saving the children and defeating the wicked scientist-entrepreneur who is equal parts the specific architect of those children's suffering and a stand-in for the predatory and antisocial qualities of unchecked industrialism as a whole.

 

Thanks to @Catpho for the content warning (I'm generally a fan of normalising content warnings and their use) - I didn't find the presentation disturbing but I did have an awful moment playing through one of the earlier levels when, in a jumpy and nervous state of mind due to low health and enemies creeping upon me from unexpected angles, I was startled upon opening a door and emptied a shotgun blast into the vague and pallid shape on the other side, only to recognise a fraction of a second after I pulled the trigger that it was Miette rather than a monster - fortunately the non-monster characters all replace decorative objects and are thus invulnerable but I did feel somewhat guilty and anguished about that careless reaction.

[Big Ol Billy]

Love those thoughts! Very gratifying to hear as the project leader. I love all the maps in their own way, but I agree that Scrangus/Jaxxoon/Mantis' MAP04 is a real stunner. With the DBPs, it's always exciting to see what people do with the resources you give them, but I was particularly amazed this month, with people turning in amazing looking maps despite only having a month and nearly no stock textures to lean on.

 

I think I had a similar kind of reaction once when playing MAP04 re: a surprise Miette. As I see it, the child THING design assumes that any shot directed at them is accidental and thus should be ineffectual, which I think basically works (plus it's much simpler from a DeHackEd perspective, of course!). Glad to get some positive feedback on the content warning--I wondered if it was a bit silly for a game like Doom, but as a teacher myself and with a few friends with young children, I figured kid-related stuff might hit people in a different way than, say, your run-of-the-mill Doom blood room.

[scwiba]

Hope I'm not too late here but I just started playing and noticed a weird bug. It's an issue I think with linedef 7427 or an associated sector. Looked like it was missing a texture since it appeared as a HOM ingame (but a quick check in DB says it is textured). However, standing on the other side of the cart near one of the blood puddles (Thing 860) I noticed a slimetrail coming from the area around the HOM and I occasionally got stuck on nothing in that spot. Can't say I know what's causing this but I figured I'd mention it

[Big Ol Billy]

Yeah the opening map (and its variants) are extremely fussy—one small change can cause a ripple effect of unpredictable HOMs across the entire map. I’m creeping up on an RC3 and think I finally have it under control, though, stay tuned!

[Catpho]

RC3 is up. Idgames version coming soon!

 

Changes
- minor balance changes here and there
- addressed Joe's comments (Joe also gets a testing credit!)
- *perfect French* ... hopefully...
- fixed a potential (if unlikely) softlock on MAP10
- fixed notes on MAP10's music that would stick in some MIDI setups

among other (minor) things!

[WH-Wilou84]

Here are my FDAs on maps 01 till 04 : https://www.dropbox.com/s/3kxm8tc69cqhipk/dbp26_rc3_FDApack1_wh.zip?dl=1
(Recorded with PrBoom-plus on UV)

I really dig the moody atmosphere you guys created here.
Map 01 is a particularly striking opener, with huge vistas showing the magnitude of the place. New textures and assets are used well to depict a decaying city.
Imps sniping from various structures help making you feel unwelcome here.

Gameplay-wise, the first four maps offer a ton of variety, going from scattered cannon fodder (map 01) to nastier, Plutonia-tier fights (map 03). High quality all around :)
Some of the Doom 64 monster sprites are somewhat garish (looking mostly at the Demon and the Cacodemon here), but it only takes a few minutes to get used to them.

Managed to get stuck on map 04, near the yellow key.
I suppose there's a secret door above the spot I fell into. That's too bad, the map was great until then !

[Big Ol Billy]

Damn, haven’t watched the demos yet but I think I found that pit that did you in. What a bummer! Can’t believe we missed that one. Fortunately this will be a quick and easy fix that I can do before this gets sent off to idgames.

 

Glad you were enjoying it, though! We put a lot into this one, if I do say so myself :)

 

 

[WH-Wilou84]

Second wave of FDAs, for the remaining maps (05 --> End) : https://www.dropbox.com/s/vu5s8z04himfnet/dbp26_rc3_FDApack2_wh.zip?dl=1
(Recorded on RC3, with PrBoom-plus on UV)

No showstopping bugs this time, hehe.
It's been a smooth sail for the most part, even though the wad has some heated moments in its later levels. Map 10's underground battle with the four switches had me confused, I had some trouble distinguishing the various threats in the large lava-filled area. Thankfully, this passage is lenient as regards to health resources,  so I eventually made it to the end.

The eye enemy is particularly nasty, it's even more effective than the Arch-Vile in terms of space denial.
Cyberdemons are really dark and blend very well into the environment (a bit too well ?).

Had an hilarious death on map 08. At some point I refused to pick up a generously offered Supercharge, only to get filled with lead seconds later in a gruesome encounter with these atrocious baby-spider thingies. Pretty cool.

I remember the Jeunet & Caro movie quite well, so it was amusing to notice the various references.
From what I recall, though, one of the dominant colors was green (in fact, water was all green in the movie if I remember correctly), and your wad features mostly blue / grey / brown tints instead.

Music choices were fine.
Maybe there's too much accordion, even though you hear some a couple times in the film so I can understand why you guys did choose these MIDIs.
 

Great stuff overall, it's been a pleasing experience !
It's a lot different than what you commonly find in Doom wads, but I don't mind trying new kinds of things from time to time. Adapting to the new assets can be demanding, but it's well worth trying.
 

[Big Ol Billy]

Yay, glad you made it to the end bug-free @WH-Wilou84 :)

 

Trying to make all the new resources relatively legible was maybe the biggest overall challenge of this set, one where we really benefitted from having a team of mappers and testers who could come to the resources with fresher eyes. People will have to judge for themselves ultimately, but I’m proud of the results.

 

Good point on the green in the film! There’s some vividly green fog/smoke that features prominently in one sequence, too, which might have lent itself to a cool enemy or gameplay mechanic. Although I did rewatch the film for the project, the slightly more dour colors here do capture the stuff that resonated most with me in a way, I think. When I’m working on a big project, I’ve always got to slide in a little bit of socio-political subtext, and during development I was definitely feeling some kind of way about some of the film’s themes of intergenerational conflict vs. solidarity, the technological and economic roots of societal decay, rationality vs. imagination, etc.

 

The evil eye is indeed a bastard. Basically the strategy in the bestiary was to split the vile’s threat potential into two monsters that offered a intensified version of one vile attribute. So the eye is a more aggressive area denier, while the phantasm/reaper is a more relentless resurrector. It took some tweaking along the way, but I like how the result gives you challenges that call up some of your pre-existing Doom vile combat skills but with a little twist.

[Big Ol Billy]

At long last, we're up on idgames!