Improvements you would make to commercial Doom maps

[Andromeda]

These are some significant changes that are completely unrealistic, but what the hell I'll share anyway.

• Dismantle the episodic structure of Ultimate Doom, ergo have the ability to play all the levels continuously if desired.
• Add the super shotgun, megasphere and the new monsters from Doom II to Ultimate Doom, reworking all the levels based on the additions.
• Make the Cyberdemon on MAP29 appear on every difficulty, make the fight unskippable, and have the exit teleport to the Icon of Sin arena instead. This MAP29 would obviously move to the MAP30 slot, which means either a new level would have to be created or one long level would be split in two, such as MAP15.

[wallabra]

Honestly I never quite got the point of episodes either. Maybe stopgaps for the backpack?

[Stupid Bunny]

On 3/3/2021 at 3:52 PM, Gustavo6046 said:

Honestly I never quite got the point of episodes either. Maybe stopgaps for the backpack?

I think because it was a good way to sell the game within the shareware model, which is why id and Apogee and stuff released everything as trilogies up to that point.

[ReX]

On 3/3/2021 at 11:43 AM, Andromeda said:

Add the super shotgun, megasphere and the new monsters from Doom II to Ultimate Doom, reworking all the levels based on the additions.

That is a radical and spectacular idea. It would take a massive amount of work/playtest tweaking (not to mention copyright issues), but it would be so worth it.

 

To eliminate copyright issues, I wonder if it could be done as follows:

 

1. TUD maps would need to be created from scratch. There are plenty of off-the-shelf Episode replacements, so this isn't really an impediment. [The downside is that the player wouldn't be playing the original TUD maps.]

2. The project would need a source port that supported something like DECORATE/ZScript definitions. Using DeHackED or WhackED would not work, as they don't support the creation of a slew of new actors.

3. The player would be required to own both doom.wad and doom2.wad

 

Any takers? @Andromeda would get the credit for the idea.

[seed]

On 3/2/2021 at 8:45 PM, Rudolph said:

I am surprised nobody talked about moving the enemies stuck in the architecture, e.g. the Shotgunner and the barrel in MAP02: Underhalls.

 

That was breakage introduced by v1.8, which moved around some map coords. It got those barrels stuck into walls too.

 

Last time Underhalls and a few other maps were mighty fine was in 1.7. 1.9 fixed most issues but the stuck Sergeant and barrels inside walls on Underhalls was not among them. Reverting the map to its 1.666 glory is something I would do too.

 

1.8 was for all intents and purposes, a downgrade patch, it broke way more things than it fixed.

[Tanksy]

On 3/6/2021 at 2:14 AM, ReX said:

That is a radical and spectacular idea. It would take a massive amount of work/playtest tweaking (not to mention copyright issues), but it would be so worth it.

I have no clue why you're mentioning copyright issues for what would boil down to just being a map wad that uses DOOM II as the iwad. What's the copyright issue exactly?

 

I feel this has been done to death but taking the DOOM I maps and adapting them to DOOM II has been a practice project of mine for getting to grips with UDMF mapping and capabilities. If it wasn't for UDMF, it'd be really really easy to just port all the maps over and make adjustments to add in DOOM II content & fix missing textures. (UDMF just makes it harder because of all the specials being changed)

[wallabra]

On 3/6/2021 at 6:49 AM, seed said:

That was breakage introduced by v1.8, which moved around some map coords. It got those barrels stuck into walls too.

 

Last time Underhalls and a few other maps were mighty fine was in 1.7. 1.9 fixed most issues but the stuck Sergeant and barrels inside walls on Underhalls was not among them. Reverting the map to its 1.666 glory is something I would do too.

    

1.8 was for all intents and purposes, a downgrade patch, it broke way more things than it fixed.

 

And I always, always thought it was intentional. I believed id was using it as a way to introduce the player to the barrel and to killing monsters with it, or something.

[ketmar]

that sergeant simply cannot live without his beloved barrel. they are unseparable, and he cannot force himself to walk away from it.

[seed]

14 minutes ago, Gustavo6046 said:

And I always, always thought it was intentional. I believed id was using it as a way to introduce the player to the barrel and to killing monsters with it, or something.

 

Nah, just that patch breaking many things, and id got lazy with 1.9 which, while correcting most of the breakage such as shifted textures, never bothered with some details.

 

Would honestly love if id would fix that for Unity, same for the last two blind Chaingunners on... actually I forgot which map it was.

[wallabra]

2 minutes ago, seed said:

Would honestly love if id would fix that for Unity,

 

That'd smell like 1.10!

[seed]

4 minutes ago, Gustavo6046 said:

That'd smell like 1.10!

 

Make that 1.12, I think.

 

1.10 is technically Final Doom if I recall, it just didn't get a proper version bump, and BFG Edition 1.11. Unity doing its own thing would make it 1.12.

[ReX]

1 hour ago, Tanksy said:

I have no clue why you're mentioning copyright issues for what would boil down to just being a map wad that uses DOOM II as the iwad. What's the copyright issue exactly?

Yes, you are quite correct. As a matter of fact, the very same thing occurred to me yesterday. And, yes, the editing of the DooM I textures to equivalent DooM II textures is a relatively straightforward task.

 

1 hour ago, Tanksy said:

taking the DOOM I maps and adapting them to DOOM II has been a practice project of mine

Let's see some of your work.

[holaareola]

I would have made the first door structure on E3M1 more than spray-on thin. Even child me was bothered.

 

Speaking of E3 problems. E3M8, what are we to do with you? I would have restructured the map to be a sequence of arenas with escalating waves of enemies, all the way up through the previous bosses e.g. 4 barons, a couple of cybers and then finally... TWO Spiderdemons, since thread premise means we can't change the monster stats themselves and a lone Spiderdemon is a walking anti-climax.

[Vermil]

The Cyber demon and Spider demon in Doom1 are implied to be unique according to the ending texts, so technically they shouldn't appear again (obviously I know that in reality they both appear multiple times across the games).

[Tanksy]

26 minutes ago, ReX said:

Let's see some of your work.

 

It's not a straight 'port', there has been a lot of fiddling. I haven't touched doom builder in a few years so it's been both a refresher in the basics and an exploration of UDMF. I want to explore its capabilities as a map format, whilst also trying to avoid ACS because I think that can be over-complicated vs. some otherwise simple and elegant in-map solutions.

 

The most work I've done recently has been on E1M1 but it's gone through three different iterations where I was trying to mesh it together with other maps; like having the Exit be an airlock to a courtyard that in turn leads to the entrance to E1M2, and see how the pacing feels to have both levels as one. Another little experiment I done was putting E1M1 as a continuation of MAP01 (So going through MAP01's exit would open the door at the start of E1M1 and lead you into there).

 

However, Not really feeling confident in larger scale maps yet, I figured it'd be better to just refine E1M1, extend it a bit and rework it room by room.

 

I got a bit distracted though, just exploring features like teleport lines, 3D sectors, monster ambushes, 'soft scripting'.. There's only a little focus here, and I haven't had a whole lot of time so all-in-all progress is pretty slow. Not like I'm in a rush or anything, I've just been taking it easy.

 

 

Spoiler

This secret area is now disconnected from the other end of the map, and I've turned it into a light monster arena in two stages.

If you kill all the chaingunners you'll trigger a super shotgun to be teleported into the first room of the map.

 

[holaareola]

1 hour ago, Vermil said:

The Cyber demon and Spider demon in Doom1 are implied to be unique according to the ending texts, so technically they shouldn't appear again (obviously I know that in reality they both appear multiple times across the games).

Ah, you're quite right, without changing the ending text that wouldn't work. Just the one spiderdemon then.

[wallabra]

7 hours ago, seed said:

Unity doing its own thing would make it 1.12.

 

Ah, I see.

[I Drink Lava]

I would swap E2M9 and E3M9's music tracks so that Fortress of Mystery plays the standard secret level music while Warrens plays the E3M1 track again.

[ReX]

11 hours ago, Tanksy said:

taking the DOOM I maps and adapting them to DOOM II

 

11 hours ago, Tanksy said:

a map wad that uses DOOM II as the iwad

A couple of additional things occurred to me today. The maps could be made to look like the originals in DooM I, but, for example, Episode 1 wouldn't look the same without the skies. Nor would it sound the same without the music. [Side note: I had modified the Episode 1 skies for an earlier project. I suppose they could be used.]

 

Obviously, there are workarounds for these types of impediments. But they might detract from a strictly DooM I mood.

[Mazze]

On 3/2/2021 at 8:53 PM, peach freak said:

Plutonia:

 

Map09: I know Plutonia is supposed to be difficult, but the final area in this map is just ridiculous. I normally don't like doing mid-level saves, but this is one of the very few maps I carve an exception out for. The teleporter leading you to the final area is one-way, so you can't go back and grab other health or ammo. When entering the final room, the door behind you closes permanently. That room houses a Soulsphere so you can't go back and grab it if you want to, even if you enter the area with 200% health and were planning on saving that second Soulsphere. There's nowhere to hide in the room, as you will always be exposed to some enemy. Each corner has a Mancubus and Revenant, and when you're trying to kill everything, you need to keep moving as there's the possibility of being pelted in the back with fireballs or not knowing you have a couple of homing missiles on your trail. Also, all pits in the final room are inescapable, and when you're fighting everything and trying to avoid an attack or two, it's pretty easy to fall in. Again, the only real area of Plutonia I have any gripe of difficulty-wise.

 

100% agreed. This is the toughest room to survive in the entire game for me. Not in a fun way either, just in a tedious "please don't fall off the edge whilst dodging revenants and mancubi" way.

[Mazze]

Most changes that I'd do have been suggested already. But if it as up to me, I'd consider shortening TNT in half and removing the majority of maps that fall between MAP17 and MAP 30. Some of those levels are beyond rushed and a pain to navigate. It's a shame as some of the early parts of TNT are pretty good and arguably better than much of Doom 2.

[HQDefault]

Anywhere possible on every map this applies:

 

Make it so that you CANNOT come across a keycard without first having seen (or at least been within line of sight of) a door that it goes to. It would be very helpful for pacing and landmarking, and hopefully cut down on aimless wandering.

[Stupid Bunny]

1 hour ago, HQDefault said:

Anywhere possible on every map this applies:

 

Make it so that you CANNOT come across a keycard without first having seen (or at least been within line of sight of) a door that it goes to. It would be very helpful for pacing and landmarking, and hopefully cut down on aimless wandering.

Plus finding a key before the door makes the key kind of redundant anyway, at least potentially. To make an extreme example, if I put a yellow keycard right in front of the player in the starting room then all the yellow doors in the map might as well have been regular doors.  Or like if you have one yellow door in a map and the yellow key is like 4 feet away from it.  

[TheRealR@kk]

make downtown look more like a town

[Martin Howe]

On 3/2/2021 at 6:02 PM, Lol 6 said:

I'd take away the cyberdemon in map 32 and put hans grosse in his place.

I'd go further; put the dogs in MAP31; my personal mutator does this (code below, if anyone cares; ZScript required).

 

Put in a PK3/directory in a subdirectory filter/doom.id.doom2.commercial:

 

MAPINFO

gameinfo
{
    AddEventHandlers = "M426_DOOM2MAP31_EH"
}

 

ZSCRIPT

// --- DOOM II MAP31 -----------------------------------------------------------

version "3.7"

// ITEM: Replace the demons with dogs.
//       This map is meant to be a homage to one of the original Wolfenstein-3D
//       levels; in that level they used German Shepherd guard dogs as enemies.
//
// ITEM: Perform the replacement using CheckReplacement() at level start
//       The LevelPostprocessor class functions only allow replacing items by
//       DoomEdNum and the author prefers to not rely on the uniqueness of those
//       not defined in vanilla doom, especially those created for generic mods.
//
//       An event handler, coded to self-destruct once the level is initialised,
//       overrides CheckReplacement() and performs the replacement by class name,
//       but only if the level checksum matches Doom II map 31.
//
// ITEM: Use normal enemy dogs rather than the 'super dogs' of the base class
//       The MBF Helper Dog is absurdly resilient and intended as what would
//       nowadays be called a 'companion mod' actor; this was quite far-sighted,
//       as MBF predates the recent fashion for companion mods by over 20 years!
//
//       In the context of Wolfenstein-3D, this does not work; the dogs must be
//       roughly equivalent in power and resilience to the standard pink Demon.

Class M426_Personal_MBFHelperDog : MBFHelperDog
{
    Default
    {
        Health 150;
        GibHealth 75;
    }
    // Only if you have gib sprites for them!
    // I use the original sprites and Enjay's gib sprites;
    // Nash's sprites are built into GZDoom, but don't have gibbage for the dogs.
    States
    {

        XDeath:
            DOGS O 8;
            DOGS P 8 A_XScream();
            DOGS Q 4;
            DOGS R 4 A_Fall();
            DOGS S 4;
            DOGS T -1;
    }
}

Class M426_DOOM2MAP31_EH : EventHandler
{
    private bool destroyMe;

    override void OnRegister()
    {
        destroyMe = false;
    }

    override void WorldTick()
    {
        if (destroyMe)
        {
            if (!bDestroyed)
            {
                Destroy();
            }
        }
    }

    override void CheckReplacement(ReplaceEvent e)
    {
        string checksum = level.GetChecksum();
        if (level.GetChecksum() == "3ff94e27423f91c1585b3396f0c03459") // doom2.wad MAP31
        {
            if (e.Replacee is "Demon")
            {
                e.Replacement = "M426_Personal_MBFHelperDog";
                e.IsFinal = false;
            }
        }
    }

    override void WorldLoaded(WorldEvent e)
    {
        destroyMe = true;
    }
}

 

 

 

[Eurisko]

Delete Slough if Despair and Command Center 

[Samuel Slayer]

E3M6: Mt. Erebus, I would make it more obvious how to exit the level. I've been going through the secret exit all these years!

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

20 hours ago, Vermil said:

The Cyber demon and Spider demon in Doom1 are implied to be unique according to the ending texts, so technically they shouldn't appear again (obviously I know that in reality they both appear multiple times across the games).

Well, in the original 1993 release the spider mastermind is only used once, and I think the cyberdemon twice. In Ultimate doom they are reused in deed.

[Pompeji]

Honestly these aren't in general for specific DOOM commercial WADs, but more for the game as a whole. I'd add alternate firing modes for the weapons in DOOM. The pistol for example could have the alternate fire of a pistol whip, which would be more powerful than a fist but weaker than a berserk punch. Easy to use quick melee for when you're out of ammo. The pump shotgun would have a rapid fire mode, in which the Doom Guy rapidly pumps the gun after firing and takes little time to aim, which results in increased fire rate at a cost of highly increased spread. Would be useful for close quarters situations. The SSG would be able to shoot only one barrel at a time, so you can take out imps and other weaker demons without wasting two shells. The Chaingun would have a rapid fire mode, where you can shoot three times as fast but the sprite slowly turns redder until it overheats and stops firing for a bit before cooling. Chaingun would also be highly inaccurate during this firing mode. Rocket Launcher would shoot a 3 burst shot, at the cost of being extremely dangerous to use if you hit yourself with it. Plasma rifle would be able to load 10 cells at a time and shoot a large damaging projectile similar to a BFG ball but much weaker and with no splash damage. BFG would be able to overload and consume all of your remaining cells in exchange for an incredible attack that deals much more damage than a standard BFG blast. Something like 40-119 cells is just a normal shot you wasted more ammo on, 120 to 300 is a double damage shot, 300+ is a quad damage shot.

[Mangcubus]

No shootable walls. Every instance where you need to shoot a wall is not conveyed well at all, gut it.