LVENdead Posted August 7, 2020 (edited) Hello everyone! It's time to finally release version 1.0 1.2 of my second map, A Stygian Anguish. This is a GZDOOM map that features extensive use of the OTEX 1.1 texture pack, with a new MIDI track that I composed. In the grand scheme of things, this map will follow my first one, Malleable Intent, in a larger WAD collection (that is likely to be between 3-5 maps depending) - but for now, this is a STAND ALONE release that is intended to be played from pistol start. NOTE: this map replaces MAP02 PERTINENT INFO: STORY: Spoiler The hellspawn spilled out of the UAC's hidden plateau base in a deluge of blood and fire, but that was only the beginning. It's clear now that the perpetuating evil took advantage of the Director's malleable intent; otherwise the assumption is that the UAC actually had the hubris to meddle with those otherworldly forces when the inevitable outcome has been laid bare time and again. As you step into the cargo lift and descend into the depths of the caverns beneath the plateau, you wonder what was worth burying under all this rock and stone. If the malice you faced to get here was just scratching the surface, what lies in wait in the darkness below? You steel yourself for what is to come, for anything given this much effort to conceal can result in nothing less than A Stygian Anguish. COMPATIBILITY: GZDoom (Default compatibility) MAP FORMAT: UDMF SOURCE PORTS TESTED: GZDoom IWAD: DOOM2.WAD REPLACES: MAP02 GAMEPLAY: Vanilla Doom 2 - Run and Gun, medium-high difficulty ESTIMATED PLAY TIME: I can finish it in 20, it will probably take you between 30-40 on your first playthrough FREELOOK/ADVANCED MOVEMENT? No freelook, jumping, or crouching DIFFICULTY: This map is intended to be challenging on UV (good luck with your FDA's). Currently, there are no item or monster adjustments made for other difficulties, so if it's too hard just play on HMP. CAVEATS: Please play the map in SOFTWARE mode. It's my personal opinion that hardware rendering washes out the sector lighting in an unflattering way, and I don't think OTEX textures look quite as good in hardware mode. Otherwise, dynamic lighting, lights.pk, etc are fine. I also composed the MIDI track with Microsoft MIDI in mind - if you use something else like FluidSynth, the mix is way off balance. Still learning how to account for this in my process. CREATION TIME: About 3 weeks ASSETS INCLUDED: 1 New MIDI track, OTEX 1.1 textures _______________________________ DOWNLOAD: STYGIANANGUISH.zip _______________________________ UPDATE CHANGES: Spoiler version 1.1 Added some medkits in key areas to help replenish the player after tougher fights Adjusted the placement of enemies in the final area Added a door in the Rocket Launcher room to keep the player from triggering the fight early version 1.2 Fixed a linedef trigger that broke in 1.1 Fixed some missing textures that resulted from changes in 1.1 A wad info file is now included in the zip SCREENSHOTS: As always, I'd love to hear your feedback! - This is a learning process for me and it's impossible as a creator to know what the experience will be like for a player jumping in blind. -How is the distribution of resources? This is tough to strike the right balance - I want the players to run low on health and ammo but I don't want you to run OUT of ammo. -How are the fights? I tried to structure this away from room-to-room combat and more towards open areas so it feels more like a continual battle but with larger setpieces interspersed. Was there any major bullshit or was it pretty reasonable? -Did you find all the secrets? :) -Did you notice any glaring bugs, softlocks, missing textures, or anything else out of wack? It took me a long time to use SLADE's "cleanup" feature for the textures, flats, and patches, and I hopefully didn't miss anything (but man was it a major pain in the ass) Link to my previous map: Spoiler METHODOLOGY AND REFLECTIONS: (not important to play, but maybe you want to know my thought process!) Spoiler - I've always been a fan of maps that make you fight for a spot where you can put your back against the wall and begin mounting a comeback against steep odds. This map is intended to make you feel like you're scrambling from the beginning (although it is not a hot start) and make some daring moves to keep yourself alive. You might find the beginning a bit frustrating as a result, but the idea is that you feel a great sense of relief when you can finally catch your breath. -I wanted to work in "opposing design" compared to my first map in as many ways as possible. As such, I leaned more towards an organic environment (an underground cavern) that looked like bases were built in and around it, versus just being entirely in a tech base. I also wanted to get away from the "room-to-room" doorscum style of combat and make it feel like you're fighting one continuous battle for most of the level, without resorting to just structuring the level as an open arena. This is trickier than it sounds, because the monster AI in Doom is quite frankly completely fucking dumb, and monster behavior was the single most present constraint in how I went about this. -On that same note, trying to evolve my design of the combat spaces was challenging in unexpected ways. For example, I learned late in the process to incorporate "turret monsters" in the room design EARLY, rather than designing the areas and then trying to decide how to place turrets. Learning how to structure, pace, and release the distribution of monsters was also a challenge, as they have a tendency to just lump together as they chase down the player, which is kind of dumb. On the other hand, heavily relying on teleporting monsters and monster closets can make the battles feel like "wave-based combat" which I'm not a huge fan of on the whole, or result in areas feeling empty until the monsters are triggered into the fight. -I almost kept the plasma gun locked behind a secret, but eventually decided to just incorporate it into the map progression. I think this was a good call, because it allowed me to crank up the pressure fairly and incorporate another resource (cells) into the map balance. -I again ended up scrapping entire areas of the map after spending HOURS creating them after ultimately being unsatisfied with how they turned out. This is an unfortunate quality of my "I'll know it when I see it" style of mapping, and hopefully this improves toward efficiency as I get more experience. -I decided to give UDMF a try because I eventually wanted to take advantage of features like colored lighting and the more versatile linedef actions and triggers. Perhaps amusingly, the map features a comical imitation of scripting using a method not unlike classic "voodoo dolls", primarily because I didn't want "learning ACS" to become my bottleneck to completing the map. Edited August 16, 2020 by LVENdead : Updated to 1.2 25 Share this post Link to post
El Inferno Posted August 8, 2020 Hey, I played and recorded your map. I think the map is fine overall but it wasn't that fun for me because of low health supply. For the most part of the map I was running with like 10% and this forced me into a somewhat cautious type of gameplay which I don't find really fun. Say, the last room would've been much more enjoyable for me if there were no shotgunners and chainers there (but some revs instead for example). I think if you do some health/hitscan rebalance then the map will be much more interesting to play. Some positive moments: imp spam in BK area was quite fun, the pinkie trap was severe but I managed to survive and so it was cool) (though I'd add more health after that trap). I accidentaly skipped plasma gun trap but I think it's easy to escape anyway. I think ammo placement was fine, I never really run out of it. I found 1 secret. Visually map is nice and I didn't spot any issues with it. Here's the video: 1 Share this post Link to post
LVENdead Posted August 8, 2020 @el_inf thanks for giving my map a run! Your experience is basically exactly what I was curious about when balancing the map towards the more difficult, and one that is hard to do well as the author of the map since I can't just "forget" where all the items are or monsters will spawn, etc. This definitely brought something to light though, which is that if you get beat up early in the map it's very hard to get back on your feet. I think that kind of illustrates something I hadn't really considered much in the map design which is "checkpoints" to replenish the player's health, especially with some of the traps being so brutal. I'm also sorry to see that you missed several (what I hope are) interesting "visual" set pieces...the room where you find the RL actually has the Barons rising out of the floor in little tanks that lower back down and reveal the enemies, and the red switch you pressed after the nuke fall at the end actually opens several airlock doors in that long hallway one after the other in a sequence that I thought looked neat. The lone grunt at the end was actually supposed to be a bit humorous because you'd expect something really dangerous after watching the doors open, but I understand your suspicion that shooting him would wake up an ambush or something. Appreciate the feedback! I'm gonna work on a revised version with a little more health spread around so hopefully it's less frustrating. 2 Share this post Link to post
LVENdead Posted August 16, 2020 Made some minor updates to this map to fix a couple things that I broke in the 1.1 update. Working on updating the MIDI file for a future update so that it sounds better, but that's gonna take some time and probably won't warrant a completely new upload unless I make other major changes to the map. We'll see. A STYGIAN ANGUISH v 1.2 : STYGIANANGUISH.zip 0 Share this post Link to post
DragonsForLunch Posted August 17, 2020 I played your map!Visuals: I thought it looked great and there's attention to detail and variation to the environments. I especially liked near the end where you traverse into the lava-filled deeper part of the cave. I know it's supposed to be dark in a cave but I thought it was a bit too dark in some areas. I think working some contrasting lighter areas might be interesting. A lot of the OTEX textures are pretty dark I guess. Map layout: I loved going to places later in the map that I'd seen from afar earlier. That was a really cool detail and also helps me find my way around the map. I didn't get lost once, so that was nice. Monsters and encounter: Very effective pressure from turrets. I honestly don't know if I found the turret challenges fun. I generally don't like if there are too many areas where I have to just dodge and run away from the monsters because they are too far away for me to hit them. On the other hand, I did feel a nice sense of accomplishment when I successfully outgunned them in the end. I ran past the archvile and co. trap in the last area because I just couldn't deal with all the flaming skulls (I forget their names). I got the secret powerup in the last area and honestly don't know If I'd survived If I hadn't found it. Ressources: I was kind of scrounging for ammo and health the whole time but mostly in a good way. I wish I'd had more than a shotgun to take on the cacodemons in the beginning. Secret: I only found the powerup one I already mentioned. Nice way to trigger it :) Bugs: Didn't find anything but I don't really look out for that stuff much. 1 Share this post Link to post
LVENdead Posted August 17, 2020 @DragonsForLunch thanks for giving this a spin! 2 hours ago, DragonsForLunch said: I know it's supposed to be dark in a cave but I thought it was a bit too dark in some areas. Do you mind telling me your visual settings? I tried tweaking this a lot, but one thing I've discovered with GZDoom is that the sector brightness can vary pretty wildly depending on your visual settings. Hopefully I can make adjustments that hit a good spot for a majority of settings. 2 hours ago, DragonsForLunch said: I generally don't like if there are too many areas where I have to just dodge and run away from the monsters because they are too far away for me to hit them. On the other hand, I did feel a nice sense of accomplishment when I successfully outgunned them in the end. For sure, I know this map leans pretty heavily on that to pressure you, especially near the beginning. I really wanted to lean into making you feel like you have to get across the bridges as fast as possible, and probably ignore most enemies shooting at you until you get into the cave past the SSG. I definitely agree with your general sentiment - I wanted that to be the sort of theme for THIS map, but if I played a map pack where every map was like this, I'd probably get tired of it real quick. Ultimately, for this map, I really wanted it to feel like you were descending into a really dangerous place and had to work to establish a foothold in a place that the demons would have heavily fortified against intruders. 2 hours ago, DragonsForLunch said: I was kind of scrounging for ammo and health the whole time but mostly in a good way. I wish I'd had more than a shotgun to take on the cacodemons in the beginning. That's good to know that it mostly hit the mark - this is one area that is VERY tough to balance in my opinion, and I wanted to force the player into making decisions based on available resources, and also to possibly have to scramble DURING a fight to find more ammo. Honestly, I don't expect most people to kill the cacodemon horde at the beginning - ideally, you thin out a few of them as you have the chance, and then revisit them once you've become better stocked (such as coming back from getting the RL). Greatly appreciate your thoughts! Every little bit of feedback helps me out as I continue to figure out how to be a better mapper. 0 Share this post Link to post
DragonsForLunch Posted August 17, 2020 (edited) 6 minutes ago, LVENdead said: Do you mind telling me your visual settings? I tried tweaking this a lot, but one thing I've discovered with GZDoom is that the sector brightness can vary pretty wildly depending on your visual settings. Hopefully I can make adjustments that hit a good spot for a majority of settings. Here are my settings. I hope it helps. I honestly think it has to do more with the dark/black-ish textures than the light settings. I struggle with figuring out light levels too so let me know what you figure out! 0 Share this post Link to post
Caleb13 Posted August 18, 2020 Damn impressive work for your second map! I run only into one hiccup, I run out of ammo during the final fight - I got unlucky with the archvile, it managed to resurrect too many tough monsters before I could dispatch it. 1 Share this post Link to post
Kachakeño Posted August 18, 2020 I've tested on LZDoom 3.86a. It works pretty well (some fps drops, though) 1 Share this post Link to post
sandwedge Posted October 29, 2022 This map is a couple years old but worth checking out again - as a second map it has a tremendous amount of thought and detail put into it, as you'll see with LVENdead's commentary! Inspired by a Valiant map, it wraps around the central bridge area through scenic cliffsides. Very good at pressuring you into fights to force you to take them head on. Awesome work. (linked to timestamp) 1 Share this post Link to post