.

[Christian Ck.]

.

Edited June 15, 2023 by Christian Ck. : Minor fixes

[Stupid Bunny]

I didn't know Civvie was having a mapping contest

 

Anyway this looks pretty kewl, I'll give it a spin

[Stupid Bunny]

Not bad overall.  The map looks cool, I especially like the large hub room.  You've made some unique use of the vanilla textures throughout the map, but here most of all.  Feels like I'm in the core of a giant computer or something.  Overall the detail, decor and atmosphere are the highlight of the map.

 

The combat is a mixed experience for me.  There's a lot of fighting monsters in corridors, often with dwindling supplies of ammo which I think you need more of in this map.  The battle in the SP_ROCK area with the...what, 3, 4 arch-viles is a pain, I'm glad you at least gave me a BFG shortly before that and that I wasn't trying to play saveless.  It could probably do with one or two archies less, and again, probably more ammo so I don't feel like the only tactic is to madly spam BFG blasts towards the archies and revvies until they're all dead.  I also wasn't too keen on the final fight, I had way too little ammo to deal with everything and in the end I just ended up semi-accidentally leaving the level before most of the pinkies were dead.

 

The layout was, for the most part, easy to follow, and it never felt like I didn't know where to go.  Indeed, the progression was actually quite linear, but also looped back on itself nicely in some places so I never felt like I was backtracking too much either.

 

This brings me though to the most annoying part of the map, which is all the instant death traps.  These are what folks in the biz call beginner's traps because there is no way I could know, for example, that shooting those dormant chaingunners would kill me instantly.  In fact I'm guaranteed to die the first time through because anyone who's ever played Doom will kill the shit out of a chaingunner the second he appears, just on reflex.  I'm glad you marked A and B on the other instant death puzzle, so I at least knew which ways to go, but there's still no way I could know that trying to go forward prematurely would melt me instantly.  Idk I feel like there's a way to achieve the same effect without it feeling so cheap...or at least to try and telegraph that going forward will cause instantaneous death.  Something to think about anyway.

 

That aside, my main points of advice are mostly just to add a bit more ammo and balance a couple of the fights.  It's a neat-looking map and it's short enough and (mostly) fair enough that it never really felt like a slog or a grind to me.  There were some neat traps and oh yeah the map name and music track are great.  I'm not sure what the parameters of Civvie's mapping contest are, but you should send them to me for...uh...reviewing purposes

[Christian Ck.]

.

Edited June 15, 2023 by Christian Ck.

[Stabbey]

I've made a map inspired by Tricks and Traps so this caught my interest, but is it possible for you to make the file available packaged in a .ZIP? My unzipper considers .RAR's as invalid archives for whatever reason.

[Major Arlene]

21 minutes ago, Stabbey said:

I've made a map inspired by Tricks and Traps so this caught my interest, but is it possible for you to make the file available packaged in a .ZIP? My unzipper considers .RAR's as invalid archives for whatever reason.

.RAR can be opened using 7zip, it's a good utility. but yeah, for things like this I would tend to echo that you want them in a .ZIP instead.

[ElPadrecitoCholo]

Hell is full of assholes

 

Ultra-Violence || Zandronum || Vanilla

 

Status:

Deaths → 6

Saves → 3

 

 

A really entertaining map, although somewhat ugly regarding its difficulty, even more so that it is a map entirely full of surprises, so, focusing on my point of view on the map, it has a very good structure and architecture put in various areas, from the main area to the final area, the truth is that I liked the idea of coming and observing completely interesting buildings, such as the area where you can see a lot what is used to identify the blue key of a door, but now, It is time to talk about the difficulty of the map, and this is where it really has a lot to highlight, mainly, because at the beginning there are traps that took me by surprise, after that, there were quite a few enemies that I had to exterminate to to advance, and most of them had made me lose valuable ammunition, later it turns out that there are traps in places that seem to be quiet, however, at least much of all that is compensated with b Good weaponry, but still, both the red key area and the final area have their brutal moments. In general, the map was really good, very entertaining and enjoyable, as it also became frustrating at times, anyway, great job you have done here colleague, and I will be waiting for the next maps that you can do.

[Silhouette 03]

Hell is indeed full of assholes. Played on UV and tested in GZDoom 4.5.0

 

Gameplay

The map plays like a slightly more aggressive version of it's IWAD counterpart, though it doesn't copy the basic design of the encounters. However I'd recommend taking a look at the way the traps and encounters were set up in the original map. Did they employ gimmicks of any sort. The traps themselves could have a bit more complexity to them, such as the voodoo doll(?) trap. In other words, build on what you already have. Some areas could also benefit from being expanded on such as the final area, where there are simply too many pinkies, and the area with the mancubi on the pedestals is way too easy to "cheese" them through door fighting and the lack of space to strafe. On a final note, why are the Pain Elementals stuck in cages? They literally pose no threat to the player, and the room itself doesn't seem to serve any purpose.   

I'm seconding what @StupidBunny said, on ammo balancing. Some of the encounters demand that the player has a lot of ammo at their disposal. Giving the player the right equipment ( or at least a substitute for the weapon needed) for each encounter is crucial. Either downscale the encounters down to compliment the amount of resources available to the player, or add more ammo to the map.

 

Layout

The layout itself is fine, no real complaints, except for the narrow spaces in some areas.

 

Texturing and detailing

 Good all-around texturing, and you seem to follow the same minimalist design of the source inspiration. The usage of the Plutonia textures strikes me as a bit odd, since they are only used in one area of note ( please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong... which I usually am).

 

Conclusion

An interesting take on an IWAD map, but one that needs a bit of polish and expansion in some areas, namely gameplay.

 

I haven't seen anything on this mapping competition, though, and I usually check Civvie's twitter quite often. Did he leave anything somewhere about this competition?

 

 

[Stabbey]

3 hours ago, Major Arlene said:

.RAR can be opened using 7zip, it's a good utility. but yeah, for things like this I would tend to echo that you want them in a .ZIP instead.

 

Oh right. I haven't used that in years and forgot about it.

 

***

 

- The fake chaingunner thing is kinda clever. I don't mind the hidden barrels there because you don't lose any progress if you die there.
- The big room with mancubi on pillars, the combat is pretty simple the first time - you just stay at the door and let infighting take care of most of it, then finish off the survivors. I have no incentive to go into the room to fight.
- Not a big fan of the inescapable death pit. Granted, it doesn't look like it is worth exploring, I only went into it to see what would happen, but I personally prefer my pits to have a way out.
- Not seeing the point of the caged Pain Elementals and free Soul Sphere.
- I walk into a room and explode without warning. That's more obnoxious than clever. One player corpse is not sufficient warning for a "cross this line and die instantly".
- I do like the idea of a teleport maze, but perhaps not the instant death. A less-harsh way would be to teleport the player into a room with poison which they need to run across to escape. They'll take some damage getting out, which will discourage them from blindly wandering, without being as harsh as instant surprise death.
- Flag all the maze's teleporter lines to "Never Show on Map", as some ports highlight teleporter lines.
- The Berserk Pack secret isn't telegraphed at all. You only find that one by humping random walls. I don't mind secrets where you have to hump walls, but some telegraphing is nice. The Megasphere one has some telegraphing because of the different light, the green armor secret has a switch if you pay attention.
- The Plasma Rifle secret is also not telegraphed.
- Some notes on the Red Skull trap... You use a player corpse as a decoration, which is fine as a warning, but you've already used that as a sign of "instant death", so that makes me concerned about more invisible teleportation into instant death. You also have a big red area full of corpses, which also implies that that particular spot is death, but it isn't. The signposting is unclear.
- I'd remove at least one of the Arch-Viles in that area, three is too many.
- You need to set the "Blocks Sound" flag on the yellow door's lines, as right now you can fire to alert the enemies and safely take out the Arch-Viles from outside the room. You need to make sure the door is closed before the player's shots can alert the enemies.
- Putting an Arch-Vile in the final area is overkill, as there is pretty much no cover at all.
- There are a lot of pinkies to deal with in the final area. You'll be essentially out of shells, and the only other adequate weapon is the plasma rifle, which is hidden in a non-telegraphed secret.
- There is no indication which of the three switches are good or bad.
- There's a softlock if you go up the Arch-Vile lift, there's no way to lower it again.
- There's a pretty tight supply of shells. Another box or two would be nice.

 

[Super Mighty G]

What's this about a Civvie mapping contest?

[Christian Ck.]

.

Edited June 15, 2023 by Christian Ck.

[Christian Ck.]

.

Edited June 15, 2023 by Christian Ck.

[NoahRules]

Played through it. Nice map
I like the cardboard cutout chain gunners at the start and the final room was pretty nice.
Solid map

[Stupid Bunny]

15 minutes ago, Endy McGufin said:

also the pain elemental room is a gag some of us decided to put in our wads because CV hates pain elementals and now he can just beat em to a pulp without em doing anything.

 

I forgot to mention this but this was actually one of my favorite parts of the map, I love goofy pointless little easter eggs like this.  Fuck the evil meatballs

 

Also can you point us to any mention of the contest?  It's not that we don't believe you, it's just that none of us can find any public reference to it and the Doomworld community might be kind of interested in such a thing lol

[Silhouette 03]

10 hours ago, Endy McGufin said:

also the pain elemental room is a gag some of us decided to put in our wads because CV hates pain elementals and now he can just beat em to a pulp without em doing anything.

Oh. He does hate those flying meatballs

[Biodegradable]

12 hours ago, StupidBunny said:

Also can you point us to any mention of the contest?  It's not that we don't believe you, it's just that none of us can find any public reference to it and the Doomworld community might be kind of interested in such a thing lol

 

It would be nice if @Endy McGufin elaborated on that. If I had to take a guess, considering there's no mention of it on Civvie's social media accounts, it must be for his Discord server.

[Christian Ck.]

.

Edited June 15, 2023 by Christian Ck.