[GZDoom] TacoSalad

[Matias]

Requirements and other important stuff

 

-DOOM II (replaces map01)

-Freelook Required
-GZDoom Only (tested with 4.2.1, 4.3.3 and 4.4.2)
-UDMF format
-Hardware Rendering
-Sector light mode Doom or Dark
-Uses tons of dynamic lights and reflective floors

-Has some 3d floors
-Playtime around 20-45 minutes

 

DOWNLOAD. Zip file includes TacoSalad.wad and TacoLite.wad. They are identical except TacoLite doesn't include reflective floors

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qrVGObtFzxpGXYDbX93FMxZ3rsLePGc6/view?usp=sharing

 

Little backround of this wad. 

 

So i originally started making this right after my last map Books And Blue so that would be summer 2019.

I worked on it for a while until i abandoned it, i continued working on it fall 2019 and abandoned it again.

Later that year around late november i decided i would try to finish it before the year ends, that obviously didn't happen.

I still continued working on this wad on and off all the way to february 2020. While also doing other stuff like the amazing dr.Phil archvile mod . 

Most of the work was done between novemer 2019 and february 2020, it was 90% done at the time until i lost interest/ was burned out with this map.

Biggest reason for abandoning this map again was that there was one specific room that i really struggled to make good so i just kinda forgot about the entire map.

 

Now in late 2020 i came back to doom mapping and started 2 new maps, but a thought came to my mind 

"wasn't that one map almost done? i should probably finish that one first" 

So that is what i did. Like i said the map was 90% done.

I didn't want to change it too much so i only fixed the issues i came across and obviously finished everything that was unfinished.

So all the areas that were done i left untouched so i don't get carried away and remake the entire thing. 

 

End result ? well i like to think it's an old building that has been partly modernized or something like that. 

There are areas that i really like about this map which was the main reason for finishing this map but there are also areas i'm not a huge fan of. 

 

Screenshots, Last one is from January 31st just to give idea how finished this whole thing was 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Credits
Skybox - Mechadon (Mek's Box 'o Skies!)
Midi - Makazi the hyena
 

 

DOWNLOAD. Zip file includes TacoSalad.wad and TacoLite.wad. They are identical except TacoLite doesn't include reflective floors

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qrVGObtFzxpGXYDbX93FMxZ3rsLePGc6/view?usp=sharing

 

Edited October 31, 2020 by Matias

[ElPadrecitoCholo]

TacoSalad

 

Ultra-Violence mode || GZDoom || Vanilla+

 

Status;

*Deaths: 0

*Saves: none

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: it's not the original number of enemies that the wad has, since not having found the Archvile due to being around in various places he regenerate enemies without my realizing it, so this is not the exact number of enemies that he wad has (worth the redundancy)

 

 

 

This map has a very interesting architecture, it is quite enlarged and with many areas to explore, it has very interesting sites and also has a really large space when you take one of the roads with a narrow space to go outside, really great, there are also areas in the interior that are very curious to explore, from a kind of cavern with an interior full of water and a path that leads to a technological area, to seeing quite a few trails in a specific area that leads to many paths, including the exit to the outside area on the top side, and in that part, there will be a small room that stores the Super Shotgun inside, and later there will be other rooms with much more technological area than usual. In that place you can find the 3 doors that need their respective color keys, red, yellow and blue, each of these rooms with slightly cunning traps, for example, in the red door, when it will be about to arrive To the area where the blue key is located, there will be a large lower floor of water with ammunition, 2 platforms that can be interacted with, and enough space for combat when the blue key is acquired, now with the blue key door, in this Room is a bit open space, there is a lot of technological decoration here, really interesting, and other rooms that change their environment, such as a room that is further ahead of the area that I mention, there are other places that have curious decorations, like a place that has many bookshelves, and others in which the textures vary between a forest of trees without leaves, and between simple structures that look like a normal house, it is something weird but it works for some reason, and the yellow keyed door is the exit with a curious surprise, and with an even more interesting structure than the combat it presents.

 

Now with the difficulty, the map has almost all the enemies of Doom 2, I think the exception here would be that there is nowhere the appearance of the Arachnatrons, as far as I remember, I did not see any between the fights, something If this map stands out enough, it is the sudden and very constant appearance of the Hitscanners, Imps and Pinkys, since strong enemies do not usually appear much in this wad, an example of this would be the Archvile, which there is only 1 in the entire map, which is appreciated, although in the case of the Revenants, Mancubus, Hell Knights and Barons of hell they do not appear in somewhat large numbers, such as in groups of 5 or 4, very rarely seen in small groups like In the case of the Mancubus or the Hell Knights, but if you ask me, the difficulty was quite good, although yes, the map has a really painful start due to the shortage of ammunition that you get to have in the beginning, forcing you into Occasions to create infighting between demons or ta Also in having to resort to using the fist with some Hitscanners or imps to save ammunition, but as progress progresses, ammunition has no longer been so much a problem, at least it is not the weapons of category 2, 3, 4 , 6, because in number 5, the Rocket Launcher, if you have a little shortage of ammunition in progress, and it is not until the end where you get more missile ammunition.

 

To finish, I will say that I generally liked the Wad a lot, it is very entertaining, it shows a good portion of challenge towards the player, and you do not get bored at any time, it has a lot of potential and has very good memorable fights, in addition to the map It doesn't get to be that bad with the Marine, in certain secrets and places you get a lot of health, armor, and 2 soul spheres as well as a Mega Armor, really great everything, and despite how tedious it is to have to go back in some areas just to Getting to get to some ammunition left by the enemies, or only by the medicine cabinets, in general, is a very good experience that this Wad leaves you, something worthy for veteran Doom players like me, so, very good job that you have done here, and I will wait for future maps that you get to present partner, very well achieved brother.

[Biodegradable]

Solid map, mate. Good challenging fun, lovely layout and design, some sneaky traps, smooth and intricate progression and you also do a great job rewarding the more curious player with their exploration with goodies and snazzy secrets. It's a good time to be had.

 

 

Good to see ElPad's also given it a spin, but let's see if I can get some more sexy players in on this map: @Clippy @Zolgia108 @Suitepee @Austinado @CamperLv @Soulless @Horus We've got a good one here, boys. Come check it out!

[MFG38]

Just as a quick note, there's theoretically no need for the "lite" version without the reflections, since anyone can quickly disable those in GZDoom by setting the gl_plane_reflection cvar to 0. But then again, relatively few people seem to know about GZDoom's "hidden" settings in the first place - even I didn't know about its existence until a year or two ago. In fact, it's probably only doable through the console or by editing the INI file, now that it occurs to me.

 

Anyway, map looks interesting. Just downloaded, will give it a spin shortly. c:

[Soulless]

@Biodegradable, thanks for letting me know buddy, I had an awesome time.

I cant believe how good is the layout, genious connections and really good small optional areas. A joy to explore, it is visually good looking with a lot of variety and nice little details in every room. The other important aspect, the combat, is also very good (enemy placement, ammo&health balance). Impressive work.

Just two things I didnt like: The waterfall texture, same one as regular water, even tough the area itself is great with the deep water etc.

 

 

And the fact that you cant backtrack from exit area, I left behind 2 monsters and half of the secrets. Other than that, Great work @Matias!

 

 

Edited September 25, 2021 by Soulless

[MFG38]

So I played through the map on HNTR, here's a quick review.

 

Visually, the map looked great. Texture usage was overall pleasing to the eye with no visible clashing anywhere, and the detail work was nice. I also liked how your use of dynamic lights was relatively conservative - as far as the reflections are concerned, though, they could be toned down a tiny bit. While I didn't run into any notable performance issues, there were a few places where the reflections felt out of place, namely on the wooden floor(s). I did like the water reflections, though.

 

The layout was quite good with just enough non-linearity to not overwhelm me, and I liked how several of the areas looped around each other. Gameplay was also fun with just enough challenge and lots of fun combat scenarios. The battle when you pick up the red skull key was a particular highlight, as well as the surprise right before the exit. My only major criticism in regards to the gameplay is that a megasphere is quite unnecessary to deal with a mere 4 Barons, especially next to the BFG which any decent player will obviously use right away to clear the Barons. That combat scenario honestly isn't so hard as to warrant giving the player that much of a morale boost - I think a soulsphere or even a berserk pack would suffice there.

 

Overall, the map was quite enjoyable. I'm already looking forward to whatever else you might whip up. c:

[Clippy]

Great recommendation as always @Biodegradable

 

15 minutes was kinda false advertising so I had to rush out at the end cause I got those real life obligations lol - would have liked to explore more cuase there is a lot to see here!

 

Absolutely love the way the level connects to itself in interesting ways, genius connectivity - I'm not good at reviews but here is my first play experience good times

 

Video processing check back later if won't play

 

Kudos

 

 

 

I'm hungry

 

[Matias]

wow! the reception for this wad has been much better than i expected!

i'm not going to lie i was a bit worried what people would think about it.

 

@ElPadrecitoCholo Thank you for taking your time to play and to do that awesome write up, really enjoyed reading that. Thank you!

 

@Biodegradable Thank you for that recorded playthrough, always great to see how the map plays from other perspectives!

Also thanks for recommending this to others!

 

@MFG38 That is very good to know how to turn off the reflections, i wasn't aware of this but assumed there would be a way since gzdoom seems to have setting for everything you could ever need and even more. I do think that most people would fall into the category of not knowing about these "hidden" settings like you said. I made the "lite" version when i realized the normal version runs really badly on my laptop and i didn't want people who have weaker hardware to launch the wad, see it runs awful and ignore it. So the lite version makes it much more easily accessible for these people that have weaker hardware and don't know about all these settings.

 

I'm not sure how well you know about gzdoom but i hope you don't mind me asking, if you would have any idea why a wad like this with reflections runs way worse on my laptop that is technically superior to my desktop pc? has better gpu, has better ram, and technically would have better cpu. Only thing i can think of is my desktop  pc has higher cpu clock speed. is gzdoom so cpu clock dependant?

 

Also thank you for playing and giving feedback! hmmm... yes i think you might be right about that megasphere being way too much , i wanted the player to have high change of leaving that fight with over 100 health and over 100 armor(even for less experienced players) and that it would be more just like little scare instead of a "real fight". The wood floor reflection was actually the first reflective surface on the entire wad, i might have overdone it a bit with reflectivity there, especially since the wood floor ended up being used only in that one area making it even more unneccassary.

 

@Soulless Thank you for playing! Your criticism is very fair and exactly what i would say. The fact that you cannot backtrack is something i do not like, this is 100% on me since i was not thinking about that at all when i created the ending for the map. it probably would have been fairly easy to implement as well. And for the waterfall i'm pretty sure there is no waterfall texture in DOOM II and i didn't want to use any custom textures here. Actually i learned how to add custom textures after making this map for my next map. Or maybe i'm just tripping and there is a waterfall texture in DOOM II, that would be kinda embarrassing but definitely possible since i haven't gone through the entire DOOM II texture set in ages.

 

@Clippy yeah i might have accidentally lied about the time needed... i'm going to change it to 20-45min, 15min is way too optimistic. Really enjoyed watching your video, like i said earlier to Biodegradable it's always great to see a different perspective on how the wad plays. I really liked seeing the cave areas working as intended at creating confusion.

 

I'm really glad that everyone seems to be enjoying the looping nature of the level and the mix of linearity with non linearity. It's something i really focused on this map compared to my previous ones that all felt a bit too linear, but i'm personally not a huge fan of super non-linear maps so i tried to find a good balance.

 

I hope i addressed everyone appropriately, i don't want anybody to feel like their feedback is not appreciated!

 

[MFG38]

57 minutes ago, Matias said:

I'm not sure how well you know about gzdoom but i hope you don't mind me asking, if you would have any idea why a wad like this with reflections runs way worse on my laptop that is technically superior to my desktop pc?

 

Only possible culprit I can think of is your laptop GPU. GZDoom is known to not cooperate as well on AMD's cards as Nvidia's, and that's not even mentioning integrated GPUs. I ran into more than a few problems with the graphics getting absolutely fucked at worst on some maps on my previous laptop, which, it later turned out, was because GZDoom was using the integrated GPU instead of the GeForce GT540M that was also built into it.

[ElPadrecitoCholo]

1 hour ago, Matias said:

@ElPadrecitoCholo Thank you for taking your time to play and to do that awesome write up, really enjoyed reading that. Thank you!

 

@Matias You're welcome Partner, I hope you get to publish more maps around here partner, I really would like to try bring it to the table, haha

[Matias]

22 minutes ago, MFG38 said:

 

GZDoom was using the integrated GPU instead of the GeForce GT540M that was also built into it.

okay i feel kinda stupid, that was exactly the issue. Just got a laptop that has nvidia graphics so i've never dealt with that kind of stuff. Thank you for the help!

[Clippy]

I felt obligated to not rush at the end so I took one parting shot:

 

 

[Suitepee]

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/816769894

 

My playthrough starts at around 2:35. A fun map overall.

[Wilster_Wonkels]

This is certainly not a bad map by any metric. I played the lite version because my computer is not good by any metric. It has a medium difficulty throughout, but the challenge does have a very natural feeling progression as you get better weapons. Ammo was amazingly balanced for the earlier portions of the level. I love that feeling of relief when you're starting to worry as your shotgun ammo runs low but then you find a box of shells, which is always enough (if you know what you're doing,) to get you through the next fight.

 

The level isn't hyperdetailed, but it's not bad at all. The caves and tunnels looked nice, and everything else was pretty much on par. The textures and area types are nicely varied, and the level avoids feeling bland because of this. I didn't play with reflective floors though, so those would probably add something. The best part of the map visually was the really good use dynamic lights throughout. You know how to light a level, but I feel as though the final room was perhaps too dark. I was just firing my plasma rifle at that point and letting the shots light up where I was shooting because I couldn't see any other way.

 

The layout of the level was intricate, but still somehow easy to follow. I found myself lost near the end though. I don't know if that's my fault however, as I just got my wisdom teeth out today and I'm still waiting for the sedative to wholly wear off.

 

Overall It's a very solid level. You did a fine job.

[Matias]

Thanks for playing @Suitepee , really liked reading what people had to say in the chat as well.

 

The difficulty of the level is actually kinda interesting. this was supposed to have difficulty levels implemented originally but for some reason i decided to not include them(most likely just laziness) with that decision came another one, will i keep the original difficulty of what would have been the Ultra-Violence or should i go with something that would be considered more like the Hurt Me Plenty. I ended up making it closer to the intended hmp difficulty level, i wanted it to be more accessible to various skill levels of players. I might have overcompensated with the extra health and stuff i added in some places because of this, while some areas were not altered at all. Other changes was removing one archvile, removed couple revenants and atlest one mancubus, replacing some shotgunners with zombiemen etc.

 

Of course actually implemeting the difficulty levels wouldn't take too long, i might do that at some point, there is also couple misaligned textures i should fix.

 

@Wilster_Wonkels Thanks for playing, good to hear people are getting use out of the "lite" version. I suspected the gameplay balance would take a hit in the middle to late parts of the level, i think all of the early areas were left alone when i decided to not include difficulty levels.

 

It's great to hear about the level detailing as well, i try to find a good balance where the level has enough detail without being too detious to make.

 

Glad that both of you had a positive view on the map overall!

[TheLetterTen]

I'm not a very good DOOM player, so I played your map (poorly). It wasn't too terribly confusing and it really felt like one giant puzzle.. and as someone who loves puzzles: this was right up my alley.

 

Sorry for not playing on a really hard difficulty!

 

 

[Matias]

@TheLetterTen Thanks for playing and recording a video! Those are always interesting to watch

 

If you mean the map difficulty selection this map actually doesn't have difficulties implemented, but if you mean that the mod/mods you used change the difficulty thats all cool in my opinion, no reason to feel sorry for making it fit your skill level. I really don't care how people play doom, everybody should play it in exactly the way they find most enjoyable!