First map - Baron's Lair.

[LeeAurich]

Hello everyone,

 

I've spent a lot of time on one map and I'd love it if I could get some feedback from testers.

 

Edit 1: New version uploaded fixing game-breaking glitch, and addressing some issues. Download link below. If the bars at the very end of the level don't open up for you, let me know, this is the only bug I'm having trouble ironing out.

 

Edit 2: Version 3 released with some fixes based on feedback I've received. Changelog below. Download link at the bottom.

 

Spoiler

Deleted needless room near end of map.
Added new room in Red switch area to make berserk a bit harder to get.
Made an alcove player can hide behind when chaingunner trap is sprung outdoors.
Made 3 switches in triangular room a bit more noticeable.
Made archviles at end of map wake up earlier so they can't be skipped.
Fixed another spot near soulsphere pillar where you could get stuck.
Made ledge secret a bit more noticeable.
Fixed missing secret tag on hidden megasphere.
Many minor texture and graphical improvements.

 

I'm looking for any graphical glitches, ways to break the map, skip areas, as well as general feedback on design and difficulty. This is also the first time I've used Voodoo dolls. They're working 100% on my end, but I need to make sure it works for everyone else as well.

 

This map is made for GZDoom and has not been tested in anything else. It's to be played as close to vanilla doom as possible, so no freelook, no jumping or crouching. IWAD is Doom 2. Map starts on Map01 and is a single map.

 

It contains a new weapon I fully created (including sounds and graphics) which is a railgun which is in slot 2 (after you find it.) It's slow to fire, but extremely powerful and can penetrate enemies. Can take down a revenant in 1 shot most of the time.

 

Some textures and sounds are new or have been replaced. Level music was created by myself.

 

The map is intended as a UV Max style map for single players. Currently there are no item or monster changes between difficulties and no multiplayer. I would consider this a difficult map that will become a lot easier once you're familiar with it. It has a few puzzle elements, so let me know if any of these are too confusing or you feel lost.

Credits:

The custom sprites used in this map mostly come from Realm667.
The Tree sprites are from Deus Vult 2 by Huy Pham,
Lighting and Vine textures used in the map were borrowed with permission from Valiant by Paul DeBruyne

The sky texture was borrowed from someone on Doomworld forums. I unfortunately lost the thread where I found the texture and can't find it again, so I can't credit the actual artist. I'll update this if someone recognises who the artist was.

 

Lastly, I really enjoy mapping and learning all of these techniques and my ultimate goal is to hopefully one day join a team of people in making a new MegaWAD on the scale of Sunlust.

 

Download the map here:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/mw9o90wruiekr7c/baronslairv3.zip/file

 

 

Edited June 19, 2021 by LeeAurich

[Biodegradable]

Tough as nails with some heavy hitting combat and rather nasty at points given how long the player has to deal with just a chaingun and shotgun. I experienced a fair few issues with event triggering that wouldn't initially work but would then kick into gear after a few restarts fairly frequently. I found myself trapped in a reasonably large room towards the very end after I had cleared out all the Hell Knights, Barons and the Cyberdemon triplets hiding in the wall. I have a feeling the cage with the Archies inside simply failed to trigger because I couldn't progress any further, so I had to end my playthrough there. I hope you find my footage useful.

 

 

[Blip]

Just finished playing this map. First of all, the level is gorgeous and the fights and traps are pretty brutal overall (traps especially). Difficulty wise it is pretty good, the sniping revenants and the enemies that appear out of nowhere in front of you can be annoying (especially the revs if you don't grab the railgun) and the archvile and pain elemental usage is pretty evil, though they can be dealt with pretty nicely.

 

Things I noticed while playing:

Spoiler

• Jumping down at the start should count as secrets as it isn't obvious that jumping to the void isn't harmful at all and will instead give you a free super shotgun and a green armor

• The railgun is batshit insane broken, especially because it uses bullets.
  • Either make it use plasma, use more ammo, or just make the secret really really hard to find, but being able to 2 shot archviles with 20 bullets shouldn't be allowed at all.
• The doors for the switch hunt room should probably be locked until their lights turn on, else it makes it kind of confusing (it isn't honestly that bad, it is at most a really mild annoyance/nitpick).
• The ground with grass on this area that is on the picture is tagged as a damaging floor and hurts you while trying to grab the rockets
• You shouldn't script a fight to start with an item pickup and you shouldn't open doors if the invisible barriers won't open until you grab an item (Both megaspheres before the red key shouldn't be mandatory grabs for progression). Maybe the solution could be to move the trigger after leaving the rocket launcher room.
• Some secrets are behind walls that aren't obvious (plasma secret especially) or are kind of weird to tag (also plasma secret), though I couldn't find beyond 9 secrets (3 of them only after gaining the area map), so maybe it isn't the case with most of them and they are just pretty well hidden.
• I couldn't end the map because the bars never lowered. But also
  • Spoiler

    You should never allow the player to telefrag the cyberdemons before the fight even starts (aka the barons and hell knights start teleporting). You should probably only open the telefrag door when all hell knights and barons are killed in that fight or show the cybers along the other demons so that the choice of telefragging them is up to the player.

     

 

Apart from that, this map is seriously pretty impressive, I'm really looking forward to see more maps from you.

 

[LeeAurich]

Thanks for testing the map guys. Apologies for the frustration. I'm the only one that tested the map prior to this so you got to experience all of the frustration of things I missed.

 

The railgun penetrates enemies, there are several sections where I've lined up enemies so you can take the majority down with one shot. Some enemies are deaf as well so you can snipe them around corners without waking up their neighbours.

 

Here's my followup to your feedback:

 

Spoiler

Biodegradable:

The video is extremely helpful! Thank you so much for taking the time to record and upload that.

 

Regarding the issues you faced -
There should be no invisible barrier at the door after the megasphere section where Bio got blocked, something broke there and I need to fix it. Having to noclip there meant that linedefs were skipped that broke later parts of the map (which you figured out later in the video.) I'll fix that. Sorry it sort of ruined the map for you!

 

Agreed to make that texture into a regular door (the one you didn't think was a door.) You also walked past a switch that opens the bars to the red door room so no you don't have to run all the way around! Those bars are there to prevent the player from getting into the red area too early, while also teasing the area early on.

 

Your run really demonstrated how difficult the map is without finding the secrets. There's a plasma secret much earlier, and a rocket launcher secret much earlier. I'll change it so it teases the weapons letting you know you can get them earlier, and put more bullets around in case they get missed.

 

With the damaging floors, they should be consistent, but I missed tagging the red floor you mentioned earlier in the video. The rest are consistent. The darker the red, the more damage they do.

 

With the last room, there are voodoo dolls that trigger on conveyer belts that are supposed to open the bars, release the archviles, and let you exit the level. I don't know why this didn't work for you or Blip. Can you please share which exact version of GZDoom you're using so I can check if it's a compatability issue?

 

Blip:

1. Agreed, making the early jumps into secrets.
2. The railgun power is at the level I like as it can punch through mancubi and revenants. I played with the damage output a lot and it's right on the cusp of being powerful enough. If I drop it 1 more damage point, the chance of one shotting a revenant drops from 66% to 33% and it becomes kind of useless. I'll experiment with ammo usage and possibly slowing the weapon down a bit more to make it less potent in longer fights.
3. Agreed, locking the doors until their lights turn on.
4. I fixed that incorrect damaging floor before release but somehow it got overwritten, will fix again.
5. The invisible barrier is a glitch and the fight is supposed to be optional. The door should open after getting the rocket launcher and you can head straight through to the next area. I'll fix the glitch on the next release.
6. I'm going to make the secrets more obvious by teasing them. Particularly the early plasma and rocket launcher. A couple of secrets are meant to be harder to find though.
7. The cyberdemon area is my first experiment with timing voodoo dolls. I had a feeling there were issues there and given that the bars failed to open for both you and Bio, either it's a version thing, or I've buggered it up. I'll do some testing and hopefully get it working properly. I'll also experiment with making the telefrag door open on the same timer automatically. No point forcing players to waste time manually killing the cybers if they miss the frag door.

 

Blip, are you able to share which version of GZDoom you're using as well?

 

If you're willing to have a look into the current map for me on your GZDooms, the voodoo dolls should trigger once you hit the switch at the end of the hallway that releases all the hell knights and barons. After hitting that switch, if you open your map and do IDDT twice, you should be able to see on the far left of the map where the voodoo doll is, and he should be slowly moving to the right.

 

I'll fix the map tonight when I get home from work and reupload in a new thread. If you guys are willing to do another runthrough I'd be super appreciative. Even if you use some cheats to skip to the parts of the map that were causing you issues. I'll pop you guys in the WADINFO as map testers as well as a thanks for the help. Thank you both again for your time!

[Biodegradable]

40 minutes ago, LeeAurich said:

With the last room, there are voodoo dolls that trigger on conveyer belts that are supposed to open the bars, release the archviles, and let you exit the level. I don't know why this didn't work for you or Blip. Can you please share which exact version of GZDoom you're using so I can check if it's a compatability issue?

 

GZDoom v4.5.0

[LeeAurich]

10 hours ago, Biodegradable said:

 

GZDoom v4.5.0

 

Thanks Bio, you're using the same version as me so I'm not sure what's going wrong. I retried the end of the map multiple times and the bars always open for me after about a minute. Do you have any other addons that may affect voodoo dolls or moving floors?

 

I've tweaked the map and addressed all of the issues listed in the spoilers below. If you're happy to give another go to check it out I'd appreciate it. But mostly if you can help me track down the problem with the lowering bars at the end of the map, that's the only gamebreaking thing I should have left.

Updated map link:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/t25kqg5iur7mft3/baronslairv2.zip/file
 

Spoiler

- Invisible wall blocking door halfway through level is fixed.

- Doors in puzzle area are now locked and open in order

- Damaging floor on platform removed.

- Lava floor with missing damage tag now tagged for damage.

- Rocket Launcher and Plasma Gun secrets now teased so it's more obvious, but you still have to find how to get to them.

- Odd door texture changed to regular door texture

 

Things not fixed yet:
- Railgun has same power level for now.
- End room bars not lowering for some people, possible moving floor/voodoo doll conflict with other mods or GZDoom internal settings. Trying to track down the issue. Need more people to test this area if possible.

- Cyberfragging teleporter can't be fixed until moving floor/voodoo issue is fixed as well.

 

[Blip]

18 hours ago, LeeAurich said:

Blip, are you able to share which version of GZDoom you're using as well?

Sure, I'm using gzdoom 4.6.0 with default comp settings, though I just read that both you and bio have the same version, which is indeed weird (maybe it's related to compatibility settings?)

 

The only thing I'm running with the wad is the sprite fix project from revenant100, which doesn't change anything gameplay related.

 

I'll try playing the updated map again and will give any feedback if needed (I'll especially check the voodoo doll stuff to see if I can find the cause).

[LeeAurich]

16 hours ago, Blip said:

Sure, I'm using gzdoom 4.6.0 with default comp settings, though I just read that both you and bio have the same version, which is indeed weird (maybe it's related to compatibility settings?)

 

The only thing I'm running with the wad is the sprite fix project from revenant100, which doesn't change anything gameplay related.

 

I'll try playing the updated map again and will give any feedback if needed (I'll especially check the voodoo doll stuff to see if I can find the cause).

 

Thanks Blip. I can't figure it out and it's driving me crazy!

[Blip]

Ok just finished playing the updated version and now the voodoo doll at the end works. I checked the last version and the voodoo doll wouldn't teleport so I don't know if some tag was screwed up and wasn't updated as it happened with that damaging floor from the last version.

 

I found a new issue in the flesh pile with the soulsphere. The issue is that you can easily get stuck in the small gaps due to the invisible walls.

I really like what you did to the secrets, showing the player some hidden rooms with weapons and goodies.

 

This map is really enjoyable and I'm planning on recording an UV-MAX demo and uploading it to youtube, as now I'm pretty familiar with the map and its secrets (I think there's only 1 secret I didn't find but nothing a quick nomonsters run can't do :) ).

 

Spoiler

Also I noticed that map02 and map03 have new tracks.

 

[LeeAurich]

3 minutes ago, Blip said:

Ok just finished playing the updated version and now the voodoo doll at the end works. I checked the last version and the voodoo doll wouldn't teleport so I don't know if some tag was screwed up and wasn't updated as it happened with that damaging floor from the last version.

 

I found a new issue in the flesh pile with the soulsphere. The issue is that you can easily get stuck in the small gaps due to the invisible walls.

I really like what you did to the secrets, showing the player some hidden rooms with weapons and goodies.

 

This map is really enjoyable and I'm planning on recording an UV-MAX demo and uploading it to youtube, as now I'm pretty familiar with the map and its secrets (I think there's only 1 secret I didn't find but nothing a quick nomonsters run can't do :) ).

 

  Hide contents

Also I noticed that map02 and map03 have new tracks.

 

 

Oh I'm so glad the voodoo dolls worked this time. I just could not track down what the issue was.

I actually have a 9 map set that this level was made for. I pulled it out to work on it as a single map, but the music tracks I made for the other levels are still in the WAD.

 

I'll fix up the getting-stuck issue along with a couple of graphical tweaks on the next release. Glad you like the map, thank you for testing it. I look forward to seeing a video if you do end up doing one!

[LeeAurich]

Updated to version 3, info in first post. Download link is here:

 

https://www.mediafire.com/file/mw9o90wruiekr7c/baronslairv3.zip/file

[Blip]

Sorry for the long wait, I suddenly had a lot of college stuff to do + job interviews.

 

blairm2053.zip

 

 

 

[hakros]

Hi, awesome map, thanks for share it !
I will include it in my app at next release.
https://hakros.itch.io/hakros-doom-launcher