RAY MOHAWK 2 - Development Thread

[Azure_Horror]

On topic of BFG, Cell Canon and Cell Ammo Capacity:
I feel that the concern about BFG is a bit overblown. On version 2b I tried to test BFG in comparison with Cell Cannon, and it seems that hey are about equal in ammo efficiency department, with Cell Cannon being much easier to use in non-slaughter environments. And Cell Cannon feels not that much overpowered compared to blaster and flamethrower. So I don't think that restricting the cells access is very necessary from a balance standpoint. Besides, the doom IWADs give the player too much rockets on continuous playthrough. And rocket Launcher is redicolously strong relative to enemies in many of the IWAD maps. Yet doom IWADs are still fun to play continously.

 

My personal thoughts about BFG adjustments:

BFG does really shine when one needs RAW DPS numbers. It is in the league of its own DPS-wise.

I am not a super experienced doomer, but i feel that there is some space for reduction of the rate of fire and the main projectile damage (it is very random anyway). Maybe it is worth to test reduction of the curent fire rate by 25% (50% faster than normal BFG) or 20% (60% faster than normal BFG). I also feel wary about rising BFG shot cost above 25 cells. It can lead to Cell Canon being too ammo efficient. Thus BFG can become relegated to rare situations, where only the raw DPS is needed.

 

One idea about the shotguns:

Right now they feel a bit boring. Would it be possible to make shotguns (and only shotguns!) instantly rise/lower, like all weapons In Rowdy Rudy 2 did?

Or such changes can be only applied to all the weapons at once?

 

56 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Based on what I’m reading here, the current changes I’m planning compared to version 2e are:

1 - Give the BFG back its double tracers, but now costs 30 cells

2 - Request that mappers in the first half of the set swap out backpacks for some other kind of bonus (can’t believe I didn’t think to restrict backpacks from the getgo..)

 

Didn't @rd. say that it would be enough to only remove backpacks, while leaving projectile cost untouched? As far as I understood  @rd.'s post, either a) or b) on its own should be sufficient to deal with the potential BFG OP-ness.

[The BMFG]

@Doomkid i placed the resources in my wad and i have put the things in on extra parameter but once i go into doombuilder and test it nothing happens. not even when i place my own wad with the damn thing. think you could give a video demonstration so i can figure this out?

[baja blast rd.]

41 minutes ago, Azure_Horror said:

One idea about the shotguns:

Right now they feel a bit boring. Would it be possible to make shotguns (and only shotguns!) instantly rise/lower, like all weapons In Rowdy Rudy 2 did?

Or such changes can be only applied to all the weapons at once?

 

Just chipping in here: I don't think this can be avoided on the mod end (minus a complete overhaul that would invalidate a lot of existing maps). I also think that's okay.

 

When the bullet weapons gain power, the shotguns usually take the backseat -- which is true even in wads like skillsaw's Heartland, or a lot of things that have bullet-eater chainguns. What makes it okay is that so much of Doom is shotgun-dominant, so it's good to play things that encourage you to use other types of weapons instead of defaulting to the SSG-like weapon for cleanup or efficient mid-DPS clearing.

 

It's also on mappers to design around the weapons to accentuate their strengths, and the autoshogun and blaster, though similar, have a different effective range, for example. 

 

Overall, I think this mod is especially good in the "unusual niche" end because the super powerful melee weapons, the cell cannon (aka faster rocket launcher), the flamethrower, the very powerful bullet weapons, and the super BFG are all unusual things that each alone would be fun additions to a "normal" arsenal. If anything, there's a good argument for restricting the game space as a mapper by not being inclined to throw in the shotguns unless you have a strong idea for it (basically to avoid the player falling back on it out of habit). 

[Doomkid]

1 hour ago, Azure_Horror said:

One idea about the shotguns:

Right now they feel a bit boring. Would it be possible to make shotguns (and only shotguns!) instantly rise/lower, like all weapons In Rowdy Rudy 2 did?

Or such changes can be only applied to all the weapons at once?

(damn, and that's after I added the smoother animations to try and make them feel less lame...!)

I think I'll leave the usual weapon switching speed in place. My main thought process here is that the player is frankly already OP enough, faster weapon switching might be going overboard. I also agree with rd that it's kind of a nice change of the usual pace to have the shotguns take a backseat to the rest of the arsenal.

 

@Azure_Horror and @rd., I want to know if this proposed compromise sounds like a good idea: With the BFG, would "give it back the double tracers, make it cost 30 per ball, but don't worry about the backpack situation and leave the cell max ammo at 200 / 400" be a good middle-ground solution? With a full ammo compliment, that's still 13 BFG balls that emit double tracers, so almost equivalent to 26 standard BFG balls if we're talking standard killing power - that still feels like more than enough, right?

 

1 hour ago, The BMFG said:

@Doomkid i placed the resources in my wad and i have put the things in on extra parameter but once i go into doombuilder and test it nothing happens. not even when i place my own wad with the damn thing. think you could give a video demonstration so i can figure this out?

I might do this later on, but the method I mentioned for chocolate Doom should work so I'm curious what's going on there

Edited May 27, 2021 by Doomkid

[The BMFG]

3 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

 

 

I might do this later on, but the method I mentioned for chocolate Doom should work so I'm curious what's going on there

i did see that after i got done fucking around for 30 mins straight there were suddenly new config files on my desktop. does this mean anything?

[The BMFG]

1 hour ago, Doomkid said:

When adding your own map, try:

 

-file mohawk2e.wad yourmap.wad

-deh mohawk2e.deh

a video of me showing the thing not working AND a demonstration of the map so far

 

this part of the map is supposed to be a hotel. like your on a vacation and then a shit ton of demons come in

@Doomkid

[ignatiOS]

I'm currently just using ZDL to open my map in choc doom.

[Doomkid]

I see what's wrong - the wad name can't be longer than 8 characters, so for example renaming it to "vnight.wad" or something should work. Also, all of the wads should be inside your Chocolate Doom folder. (Also 1:40 in that video cracked me up)

[The BMFG]

1 minute ago, Doomkid said:

I see what's wrong - the wad name can't be longer than 8 characters, so for example renaming it to "vnight.wad" or something should work. Also, all of the wads should be inside your Chocolate Doom folder. (Also 1:40 in that video cracked me up)

FINALLY! THANKS

 

also opinion on the map so far?

[Doomkid]

Starting room looks pretty good so far, you might want to "upper unpeg" the textures above the doors in the green hall so that they align better. Keep it up, once there's more there I can give it a run through and some feedback

[OpenRift]

Sorry I'm taking so long on my submission, I just get sidetracked and it's hard for me to get in the right headspace for mapping, especially with this particular theme.

 

I'm going on vacation this Friday, hopefully that can help me come up with ideas for my map ;)

[The BMFG]

10 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

I see what's wrong - the wad name can't be longer than 8 characters, so for example renaming it to "vnight.wad" or something should work. Also, all of the wads should be inside your Chocolate Doom folder. (Also 1:40 in that video cracked me up)

[The BMFG]

im just gonna use prb+ instead so i dont have to deal with all of that frustration from the thing not working . still vanilla enough ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edited May 28, 2021 by The BMFG

[The BMFG]

@Doomkid what do you think about this current state? 

also part of my video got copyrighted because apparently part of the midi in this video was taken from some random ass song called "i don't wanna be drafted" also i already have the texture problem with the outside of the building fixed so no worries about that

[The BMFG]

3 hours ago, OpenRift said:

Sorry I'm taking so long on my submission, I just get sidetracked and it's hard for me to get in the right headspace for mapping, especially with this particular theme.

 

I'm going on vacation this Friday, hopefully that can help me come up with ideas for my map ;)

some of the ideas in my map were from the vacation that I JUST CAME HOME FROM

[Kurogachii]

¿Will it have secret levels or just the 20 levels?

 

Edit: This looks sweet!

[Noiser]

I'm getting excited with this project.
If someone drop a slot again, I would like to take it please :-)

@The BMFG Try to change "-file" with "-merge". That should do the trick on choco.

[DFF]

@Doomkid It seems like the TSCRN textures are also tiled improperly/broken in game. At least in PRBoom. 

[Moustachio]

Here's my submission for Map04.

Title: Temple del Sol

Map Slot: Map04

Music Track: "Costa del Sol" composed by Nobuo Uematsu and sequenced/remixed by Kenji Terakura.

Difficulty Settings: Yes

Tested with: Chocolate Doom, Crispy Doom

 

There's still plenty more that I can do with this map (adding more secrets, more detail, etc.), but I think I'm ready to accept feedback on this level. The only bug of note that has been difficult to fix is the sprite limit bug. In some areas, sprites may flicker in vanilla Doom. That's because the vanilla engine can't render more than 128 sprites, and so the farthest sprites from the player are not rendered. The only way I can combat this is by removing decorations, bonuses, and other non-essential things in the map.

 

This has been an incredibly fun map to work on.

 

Screenshots:

Spoiler

 

[baja blast rd.]

7 hours ago, Moustachio said:

Title: Temple del Sol

 

This is a fantastic map in a lot of ways, and the good parts of it already make it one of the best maps I've played this month. 

 

I'll jump straight into the playtesting criticisms: 

Spoiler

- One theme seems to be invul use, but in 2 of 3 cases -- excluding the key fight in the square arena with the mastermind and viles and lots of pinkies warping in -- I had zero idea that there were even invuls i the area were until I was done. In the final big area with the mastermind and heaps of viles and pain elementals and everything else, I painstakingly dismantled everything only to find that there was an invul off in the far quadrant that I could have had far earlier. I went ahead and did my due diligence and reloaded a save just to replay the fights with invul, but I imagine not everyone is gonna do that. The natural impulse is to either use it far less ineffectively for an upcoming fight or feel it was squandered entirely. 

 

- I actually don't think the area plays *poorly* without the invul, but that gets to the second point. Provided I painstakingly dismantled everything in that last section, this map gets... quite long, not necessarily by some objective standards (it's still a sub-hour map, and the 800 monsters go by quickly because lots are fodder and this mod lets you nuke fodder easily), but in that it seems like it's refusing to end, in that "magnum opus" way. Like the later parts just have that feel and it starts to bite itself in the butt somewhat. 

 

Making the invuls a bit more available -- or even just more visible -- would fix that but also...

 

- ...a main culprit has to be the dual cyberdemon area, which... I don't really understand those -- because you don't have a BFG in these early maps, or even a blaster. I totally ignored those, which is easy, and then ended up feeling that entire wing and its key was superfluous (skipping them still necessitated me backtracking around the map, because of course I didn't go back through them). Even if the cybs are nixed, it's not really a fight. Even if there's one cyb, the issue still sort of exists. I might be missing the existence of another invul in here, but that would tie into my first comment. My feeling is this part leg should be axed ruthlessly (or treated as an optional secret stockup area... or anything to get it out of the main progression) and that would solve both the inherent issues with it and the "magnum opus" thing, but if you have other solutions that would be fine.

 

- At this point it becomes important to interrogate the fact that the map is a "map04" with multiple boss monsters, heaps of archviles and pain elementals, all sorts of baddies. It's not a hard map, but there are some rough parts, and due to that and length, this is definitely a "map10" or something like that, so I'd hope it can be moved there. (It's too good of a map to overhaul it to fit map04 perfectly imo. That would require losing a lot of what makes it good.) 

 

- One lone placement I had an issue with is this archvile. It is high and, when you enter the area, I had no clue where it was given that so much else was going on, so this happened: I ended up predicting the monsters that would warp in to seal my exit as I entered here, and cut through to escape... then decided I didn't feel like cheesing it and wanted to play along... then went back in and got targeted by a vile that I couldn't see... then I rushed back out. It is a really counterproductive placement that makes a player who was really motivated to be aggressive decide to change their mind. :P 

 

- So in sum... "There's still plenty more that I can do with this map (adding ...),"

I would try to do the opposite.

 

Overall, it's a good map even as is (for a later slot of course), but could be really good with improvements.

[The BMFG]

https://www.mediafire.com/file/q8rlpbbxbhzt0pt/vnight.wad/file

 

Map Name : Vacation Nightmare!

 

Vanilla Of Course

 

Tested Ports: GZDOOM Chocolate Doom PRBOOM+

 

this is probably the best map i have made so far for me. 

map13 for the project

[The BMFG]

OOPS! forgot to add some difficulty stuff https://www.mediafire.com/file/akw32lsdwosj5io/vnight.wad/file

fixed version link

[Moustachio]

@rd. A lot of very good points are made within the spoiler block. I’m glad you like the map overall, but I can see how it might be too long in the map slot provided.

 

Spoiler

 

The invulnerabilities are meant to be known about and used to cut down on a lot of grind time, so I’ll move them to more obvious positions.

 

Making the Blue Key wing optional would be fine, and it would cut down on the length of the map. Since you are potentially rewarded with a megasphere, it works as a secret area.

 

I would like to maintain at least one cyberdemon fight, since fighting a cybie with the cell cannon is a lot of fun, and it’s a good showcase of the power of the cell cannon. But with regards to length, cutting out the earlier cybie and making the aforementioned blue key area optional could definitely alleviate that.

 

I hope the length is indicative of how much fun I had making this map. I truly feel that it’s the best one I’ve made so far, and if it has to move up a few slots, I’m alright with that. But I also think that cutting down on some encounters, especially incidental ones, wouldn’t detract from the map at all. And I do still want to add some details (ships out at sea for example), and it’s a good chance I may see some opportunities for a couple extra secrets hidden about.

 

 

Thanks for the excellent critique! I’ll get to work on making revisions as soon as I can.

[Azure_Horror]

23 hours ago, Doomkid said:

@Azure_Horror and @rd., I want to know if this proposed compromise sounds like a good idea: With the BFG, would "give it back the double tracers, make it cost 30 per ball, but don't worry about the backpack situation and leave the cell max ammo at 200 / 400" be a good middle-ground solution?

 

I think that for now it will be enough to give double tracers and restrict BFG to 25 cells per shot. Some further adjustments can be made later.

The BFG can have two potential issues:

a) Too much Damage per Second.

b) Too much total damage if player has enough cells.

Ammo cost increases directly affect b), while impacting a) only indirectly.

I think that more play-testing should be done before we conclude that BFG does indeed cause serious issues on continuous playthroughs. And if we want to focus on issue b), the Cell Cannon may prove to be even more powerful for the fights where the player is not supposed to have cells at all. In that case, both the BFG and the Cell Cannon would need to be dealt with.

 

On 5/27/2021 at 6:28 PM, sluggard said:

quote

 

I will write a more detailed response on the weekend. For now I want to address just a few things:

 

I) My issues with Cell Cannon fight:

Spoiler

 

I do not think that the fight is too difficult. I can win it reliably enough as it is. The trick is prioritising targets, exactly as it is intended.

The problem happens when the player approaches this fight blindly. They do not know, which targets are present, and therefore do not now what targets should be prioritised. And without quick elimination of priority targets, death comes literally in a few seconds in this room. The result:

a) The player fails to win. (This is not a problem on UV difficulty. Getting every fight on a first try is not expected on UV difficulty)

b) The player does not get enough Intel to begin to strategize. (And this is the problem, IMHO)

Why b) is problematic? Because the right tactics is not easy to execute. The challenge already comes from the execution. And I feel that it is a bit unfair to deny the crucial info about the fight composition to the first time player. My suggestions were aimed to delay the player's death by 3 or 4 seconds and allow them to observe the encounter fully. But I understand now that my ideas are still likely to make the fight much worse.

So I want to suggest another potential solution to the problem b):

- unlock the Vile-Revenant closets instantly.

- start the fight with the archviles and revenants facing away from the player

- place revs to shield the archviles.

This result:

- player sees archviles before archviles see the player.

- player is encouraged to observe instead of blasting right away.

- non-closet monsters still put pressure on the player.

- once the player shoots, the closet monsters will join the fray.

- the player cannot use their first shot advantage to cheese and eliminate some archviles too quickly.

Can this idea work?

 

 

II) The HMP weirdness

Spoiler

On the start of the map, around the blaster platform: Is it intended that on HMP there are much more chaingunners than on UV?

 

III) The proper testing of the new version

I do not have version 2d of dehacked file. I have only 2e and 2b. Where can I find version 2d?

[snapshot]

54 minutes ago, Azure_Horror said:

quote

Seems to work well enough, it actually made it slightly easier since you can now use nearby revs bodies to distract viles but the target prioritisation trick is still there so it looks like a good enough compromise to me, I fixed the skill flags for those chaingunners aswell, File updated in the original post. I don't know if @Doomkid still has mohawk2d files but here they are just in case.

[baja blast rd.]

7 hours ago, Moustachio said:

I truly feel that it’s the best one I’ve made so far

 

I'd agree with that, and glad I could help. 

 

7 hours ago, The BMFG said:

Map Name : Vacation Nightmare!

 

Here is a (crappy-quality) first-play vid.

 

 

The "realistic" design really suits the theme, thought that was cute. The best playing area is probably the big space you warp into, where you're surrounded by lots of stuff and you can play everything there as an open space. 

 

Big Stuff that seemed worth improving:
 

Spoiler

 

- Lots of texture alignment. 

 

- Texturing ceilings: You can do a lot for presentation by treating architecture more like realistic 3D objects (in theory). A green Startan wall (like 0:11), for example, would probably have a green ceiling rather than the brown flat of the higher ceiling that seemed to be carried over by default. 

 

- The red key is buggy because you can grab it without crossing the one linedef that triggers the fight associated with it. I ran into that problem. (I went ahead and replayed the map afterwards since it's so short and thought that fight was fine.) If a corpse falls on the red key, you also can't see it's there at all. I picked it up by accident, basically. So you could use monster-block lines on top of the changes to the triggers. 

 

- Gameplay: just about everything other than the fights in that main central area, and a couple key traps, involve lots of meat clumped into rooms; the later baron can't even get out of its room because it's too tall. I think a lot of this can be retooled and given more of an identity. It's a short map, so you'd get a lot of mileage out of taking one weaker fight, adding a concept to it (like, making one monster teleport, or having barrels, or whatever), doing the same with a different concept for another fight... just to spice it up a bit. The brevity of the map is a strength here, nothing is really dull atm, but it has possibility for improvement. 

 

- You can make a good case for a lot of the hitscanners in the east room to initially not be deaf, so they can trickle in as the player is fighting in the central room, which is better than clearing out that middle room and then door-camping the east room.

 

 

[The BMFG]

9 minutes ago, rd. said:

 

I'd agree with that, and glad I could help. 

 

 

Here is a (crappy-quality) first-play vid.

 

 

The "realistic" design really suits the theme, thought that was cute. The best playing area is probably the big space you warp into, where you're surrounded by lots of stuff and you can play everything there as an open space. 

 

Big Stuff that seemed worth improving:
 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

- Lots of texture alignment. 

 

- Texturing ceilings: You can do a lot for presentation by treating architecture more like realistic 3D objects (in theory). A green Startan wall (like 0:11), for example, would probably have a green ceiling rather than the brown flat of the higher ceiling that seemed to be carried over by default. 

 

- The red key is buggy because you can grab it without crossing the one linedef that triggers the fight associated with it. I ran into that problem. (I went ahead and replayed the map afterwards since it's so short and thought that fight was fine.) If a corpse falls on the red key, you also can't see it's there at all. I picked it up by accident, basically. So you could use monster-block lines on top of the changes to the triggers. 

 

- Gameplay: just about everything other than the fights in that main central area, and a couple key traps, involve lots of meat clumped into rooms; the later baron can't even get out of its room because it's too tall. I think a lot of this can be retooled and given more of an identity. It's a short map, so you'd get a lot of mileage out of taking one weaker fight, adding a concept to it (like, making one monster teleport, or having barrels, or whatever), doing the same with a different concept for another fight... just to spice it up a bit. The brevity of the map is a strength here, nothing is really dull atm, but it has possibility for improvement. 

 

- You can make a good case for a lot of the hitscanners in the east room to initially not be deaf, so they can trickle in as the player is fighting in the central room, which is better than clearing out that middle room and then door-camping the east room.

 

 

Thanks Alot! im taking all of these criticisms and fixing the major problems you have addressed. thank you for pointing these out to me so that i can fix some critical and minor problems in this map and make it so more people will enjoy this map! 😃👍

[NeedHealth]

Could do a map05 by tuesday at the latest if the slot opens up.

[The BMFG]

Better Version Of My Map Out Now! 

 

better traps and higher difficulty! https://www.mediafire.com/file/eu8xcpr8d5pekuj/vnight.wad/file @rd. Try This Out 

[ignatiOS]

I'm starting to get a design going, I've got some work I need to finish so i'll just have to hope everything goes smoothly! :D

 

Edit: What are the different sky textures?

Edited May 29, 2021 by IggySqiggles